John Pearson's Buckets Blog

3 New Books on the WHY of Outdoor Ministry

Issue No. 538 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights "the power of camp" and three new books on growing emerging leaders. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for the table of contents to Mastering 100 Must-Read Books (a perfect Christmas gift for a leader/reader).    


Inspire your family members and friends to WORK AT CAMP next summer (or year-round)! CCCA’s Venn Diagram (used by permission) spotlights “Work at Camp” at the center of who you are, your dreams, what you love, and making a difference. Visit FindACampJob.com. 

3 Books: Growing Leaders

Oh, my. It was 53 years ago in the fall of 1969, as a very young camp director in Illinois, that I attended the fourth Christian Camping International Convention at Ridgecrest in North Carolina. Christianity Today reported on that gathering and quoted a camping leader: “You can accomplish more with a kid in one week of camp than in a whole year of Sunday school.”

Now today, the U.S. expression of CCI, Christian Camp & Conference Association, is back at Ridgecrest Conference Center for their National Conference, “Together ’22.” With pent-up demand to leave COVID in the rear view mirror, camping leaders have swarmed the place and the Dec. 5-8 conference is sold out! And still today, “the power of camp” continues to pack a punch. Visit CCCA’s website.

Little did I know during that 1969 conference what God was planning. CCI’s executive director, Ed Oulund, happened to sit across from me in the dining room—and oh, my! Ten years later, I was privileged to build on Oulund’s legacy and serve as CCI/USA’s executive director from 1979 to 1990. (CCI/USA is now called CCCA and Christian camping worldwide is thriving.)

So…in this issue, I’m fanning the flame for this amazing global ministry blessed by God—and urge you and all parents, pastors, educators, business leaders, and college students in search of spouses (I’ll explain below!)…to consider the powerful impact of Christian camps and conference centers. 

Three new books/workbooks were published this year that effectively articulate the why and how of outdoor ministry and leadership development. Do your pastors and church leaders leverage the power of camp? Consider giving your church leaders one or all three of these new books:

[  ] Blueprints: Biblical Designs for Christian Camping—Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, by Dan Bolin



Dan Bolin served 11 years as the International Director of Christian Camping International, plus 25 years at Pine Cove Christian Camps in Texas—so he’s the perfect person to write this treatise on the why of the Christian camping movement. Bolin has inspired and encouraged camping leaders in more than 30 countries and speaks with authority on why “Christian camping is mushrooming around the globe.” 

Bolin notes that “the casual observer wonders, what does it take to be a camp director besides a whistle and a clipboard?” (Yikes! Was I supposed to own a whistle?) Using a thoroughly biblical approach to his thoughtful book, he quotes Henrietta Mears, the founder of Forest Home, who said “Camp is where people make up their minds.” (Watch for my review of Mother of Modern Evangelicalism: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears.)
 
Bolin's book also addresses “the elephant in the room.” He writes that “sympathetic yet patronizing friends from the business world often wonder (sometimes to themselves and sometimes aloud) why can’t this camp be run like a business?” (If I had the proverbial $10 every time I was asked that question…well, you know the rest.) Bolin’s answer is excellent and he quotes Peter Drucker’s response to that question. And LOL...later on in the book, Dan mentions elephants again—but this time camping leaders in Kenya are teaching him!

[  ] Latin American Voices on Leadership: Their Emergence and Growth, by Lisa Marie Anderson-Umaña



In this must-read resource by Lisa Marie Anderson-Umaña—written for all Christian leaders and pastors (and camping leaders especially)—James Plueddemann doesn’t mince words in the foreword. He writes:
 
“Thousands of organizations and schools around the world claim to be ‘producing’ leaders. Huge amounts of money are being spent on training leaders, and when students demonstrate mastering of the content, they are certified as leaders. Dr. Anderson-Umaña undercuts this dangerous assumption. None of the outstanding leaders she interviewed identified a training course as having a significant effect on their growth as a leader.” Yikes!

Plueddemann, the author of Leading Across Cultures, adds, “Toxic self-centered leadership is a curse in the worldwide Church. Dr. Anderson-Umaña’s research demonstrates that healthy servant leaders grow as they learn to serve in the company of other servant leaders.”

Lisa Marie Anderson-Umaña is the Director of Leadership Development for Christian Camping International, Latin America. A missionary for 40 years, Lisa says she “married the culture” (her Honduran husband, Alfredo). A teacher and writer, her curriculum projects have been used by thousands of leaders in 12 Latin American countries.

As part of her research for this workbook, she asked Latin American leaders to share their leadership growth experiences. Anderson-Umaña’s research identified “four specific ways you can co-participate with God to help leaders emerge and grow.” They include:
   • Accompany them
   • Open up spaces for them to serve
   • Create developmental experiences
   • Promote self-leadership from the start of their journey

Research-based, but immensely practical, this workbook features 58 (not a typo!) exercises/questions to help leaders flesh out her findings and the practical next steps. And this warning: “If you’re someone who thinks that leaders can be formed through training courses, you’re in for a surprise!”

The voices of Latin American leaders: remarkable! Example: Adriana, “a pastor of a congregation of almost six-thousand members.” In the section on how to open up spaces for emerging leaders, the author describes the journey of Marcos, who inspired a Catholic priest and a Presbyterian minister to form soccer clubs in “hot” (gang-influenced) barrios.

“Marcos established strict discipline with the teams, charging one dollar if a player committed a foul, five dollars if a player said a bad word, and fifty dollars if a player attacked a referee.” (“We made a lot of money,” he joked!) But the bigger point: Marcos found a way into leadership through a side door, since his denomination insisted, “You must prove yourself first. You are young.”

Preferring direct communication and “giving more weight to the exact words” of others, Lisa learned that her “low-context” culture, as a North American, didn’t always align with the high-context culture of Latin America. One time in Mexico City, at the end of a camp counselor training session, she asked if everyone would be returning for the next session in a week. “Without exception, every single person said yes.” Yet… “No one showed up for the next meeting.” Must-read: Chapter 2, “The Role Culture Plays in Leadership.”

[  ] Leaders Yet Discovered: Experiential Development for Emerging Leaders, by Greg Robinson and Rob Ribbe



Lisa Marie Anderson-Umaña (see above) writes a generous recommendation for Leaders Yet Discovered, noting that “the streams of literature the authors have consulted stretch farther and wider than most of us have time to study and form applicable concepts.” I agree—and I’m grateful for these two leaders who have the intellectual and academic chops to deliver a concise, but comprehensive, leadership book on both the theory and the practice of growing authentic Christian leaders.

You’re probably not leadership material yourself if you can scan these pages and not be drawn deeper into these critical topics. Check out:
   • Pages 21-29: Chapter 3, “Who Am I as a Leader?” details the book’s “leadership identity formation” model—and the progression it follows: Observer (“Leadership is a thing”), Explorer, Performer, Delegator, Developer, and Sage. (This will preach!)
   • Pages 124-125: Two charts on the “Vicious Life Cycle” and the “Virtuous Life Cycle.” Vicious: “Staffing and Operating Budget Cuts: Program offerings cut; remaining staff must work harder to support existing programs.” Virtuous: “Program offerings are supported with the right level of infrastructure.”
 
Plus...see page 134 for the four quadrants chart assessing impact and viability:
   • High Mission Impact/Low Viability: Keep but contain costs
   • High Mission Impact/High Viability: Invest in continuance and growth
   • Low Mission Impact/High Viability: Enhance impact
   • Low Mission Impact/Low Viability: Discontinue or give away
Note: See my related review of Nonprofit Sustainability.

While this book is targeted to Christian camp ministries (with dozens of examples), the authors also suggest a new paradigm for all those working with emerging adults. Greg Robinson is the Associate Professor of Outdoor Leadership Ministries at John Brown University. Rob Ribbe has served at Wheaton College as Executive Director of HoneyRock, Center for Leadership Development since 2000. He’s also a faculty member of the School of Mission, Ministry, and Leadership.

ABOUT THAT MEET-YOUR-SPOUSE-AT-CAMP IDEA! Parents and grandparents: while helping your future leaders pay for college—it can be expensive. If one of your goals is to help them find a future spouse, you may be surprised to learn that serving on the summer staff of a Christian camp or conference center—often leads to special relationships and, sometimes, matrimony! (Just ask any camp director how many wedding gifts he or she purchased in the last five years!) Think about it! For more, visit: FindACampJob.com. 

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Is it time to rethink how emerging leaders become authentic, servant leaders? What’s our plan?
2) Lisa Marie Anderson-Umaña, on opening up spaces for emerging leaders, asks, “Are the voices of those who are crying out to serve, or those whose voices are soft and tentative, being listened to? Does each department or ministry have a system in place to listen to these voices?” What’s our plan?
3) Read the chapter, "The Trucker Driver Was No Match for the Faith-filled Board Chair," about the board chair at SAMBICA in Bellevue, Wash. (from Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom). What's our prayer plan? 

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Mastering 100 Must-Read Books - Part 2: Books-of-the-Year

Book #9 of 100:
Scaling Up

For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #9 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. 

Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t
Mastering the Rockefeller Habits 2.0
by Verne Harnish

Books #6 through #21 feature 16 books that I named the Book-of-the-Year from 2006 to 2020. The best quote in Book #9 is this one: “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!”
   • Read my review.
   • Order from Amazon: Scaling Up
   • Download the 100 Must-Read Books list (from John and Jason Pearson)

My review listed 12 reasons this book is a must-read, including Reason #12: Sloppy Execution! Verne 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.”

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A WELL-PLANTED FAITH.  What are you growing in the next 30 days? How about your own personal growth? Read Ed McDowell’s devotional guide, A Well-Planted Faith in an Uprooted Culture: A 30-Day Devotional with Guided Journal Entries. Read more on the Pails in Comparison blog.

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PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. Ready to scale up? What's the right-size staffing for your 2023 communications and marketing projects? Full-time staff, part-time staff, or contract help? We can help you think this through. Contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Leadership Not by the Book: 12 Unconventional Principles to Drive Incredible Results

Issue No. 537 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting details the contrarian and unconventional leadership best practices at Hobby Lobby. Stunning, really. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for the table of contents to Mastering 100 Must-Read Books.  


This “CLOSE COUNTS” billboard-sized reminder from David Green, Hobby Lobby’s Founder, is positioned in the warehouse hallway at the company’s campus. Read why “too many choices” will harm your business.

Hobby Lobby’s Leadership Manual

Really? So you’ve been preaching (bragging?) that you lead your company or organization with God-honoring principles? Sure you do. But what happens when you come face-to-face with a company that actually walks its talk? Yikes!

You will be shocked (shocked!) at the contrarian and convicting biblical standards that guide the leadership at Hobby Lobby. Caution! More must-reading ahead: Leadership Not by the Book: 12 Unconventional Principles to Drive Incredible Results, by David Green and Bill High.

I spotlight five books in Part 7, “Contrarian Thinkers,” in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. Stop the presses! Here’s another must-read contrarian book—with 10 contrarian examples:

CONTRARIAN EXAMPLE #1: Deep Generosity, Not PR Giving. The more we read about the implosion of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange, the more we’re stunned. According to The Wall Street Journal, FTX employees “…thought that they were part of this idealistic enterprise because Sam Bankman-Fried was so associated with philanthropy and the movement called Effective Altruism. He pledged to give 1% of the exchanges fee revenue to charity.” One percent is “effective altruism?” (Give me a break! I call that “PR giving.”)
 
Contrast that with Hobby Lobby, now an $8 billion privately-owned company with 1,000 stores and 50,000 employees. They give 50 percent of their profits to nonprofit ministries. According to a 2021 internal report, Hobby Lobby has given to 364 ministries over 25 years. Yet…“The top seven of them have received 80 percent of our funding, which reflects our philosophy of going deep with a few rather than shallow with many.” (And… “We almost never give to a new or failing ministry.”)

CONTRARIAN EXAMPLE #2: Better, Not Best. David Green, CEO and founder, coaches his buyers to focus on “better” not “best.” Why this contrarian approach? “I tell our buyers that we want to be ‘the best at being better.’” That’s where 80 percent of the sales are. “If ‘good’ is the bottom and ‘best’ is the top, we’re in the middle at ‘better.” Note: Hobby Lobby stores have 12 departments, so the corporate office has 12 merchandise managers with about six buyers per team. Why? Each store carries about 100,000 items (30% is seasonal). Imagine!

CONTRARIAN EXAMPLE #3: Simplicity, Not Perfection. Talk about unconventional! This fascinating book by David Green and Bill High delivers a contrarian roadmap for leaders—with 12 principles in 12 short chapters. (Hmmm. Might make a great 2023 staff meeting resource: one principle a month.)

Green has known co-author Bill High, a former attorney, for about 20 years. High’s organization focuses on generosity and donor-advised funds and “consults with families to help them create thriving family legacies and to see lives changed by Jesus.” Read more here. He also emcees Hobby Lobby’s two-day seminars for CEOs and business leaders. High poignantly asks, “What would happen if generosity became less about transactions and more about transformation?”

In Chapter 11, “Choose Simplicity, Not Perfection,” Green explains how he pushes back on decision-making overload. Example: How many nativity sets should they ship to each store for Christmas? The traditional way: in painstaking detail, calculate each store’s numbers. But wait! “Multiply thirty thousand items by one thousand stores and you’ll see we’d saddle ourselves with thirty million decisions every year! No, thank you.” (Ditto their year-round inventory: 70 million decisions every year. “Again, no thanks.”)

So Green countered (no pun intended) with this. At their Oklahoma City campus, a warehouse hallway features a billboard-sized sign in bright white letters:

“Keep it simple. CLOSE COUNTS! 
Too many choices are harmful to business.”

Green notes, “It’s the only sign in our entire complex with my name on it. I want this reminder front and center as all of us go about our workday.” (Brilliant!)

This chapter is must-read and it will help you streamline your leadership and management decision-making process. Every report need not have exact numbers. Close counts. Green’s own style is contrarian (and bare bones—no cell phone and no email!). He reminded me of the contrarian style of the former president of USC. (Read my review.) Green explains, “I operate this way because I want to run a thousand stores one time, not one store a thousand times. To accomplish this feat, I need to keep things simple.”

CONTRARIAN EXAMPLE #4: Stewards, Not Owners. Priceless! When David Green was interviewed by Stuart Varney on Fox Business, Nov. 14, Varney did a double take when he learned Hobby Lobby gave away 50 percent of its profits—and was also closed on Sundays! Plus, the company is controlled by a seven-member trust. Only family members that work at Hobby Lobby receive compensation (no trust fund babies)—and a special committee approves all family member promotions and annual salaries. Contrarian! Click here to view the Fox Business interview.


Watch Stuart Varney on Fox Business do a double take when David Green mentions that Hobby Lobby gives away 50 percent of their profits! Click here.

Why? Green discerned, after a few years of struggling, that God owns the company and “If God owns Hobby Lobby, then how do we operate differently than those who believe they own their business?” Read Chapter 3, “Give the True Owner the Vote,” to learn why “when you’re an owner, wealth can easily become a curse. When you’re a steward, wealth becomes a tool. When family members see themselves as stewards, they don’t feel entitled to wealth. Unlike owners, they know they must earn their income through their labor.” (For more on owner/stewards, read my review of The Steward Leader.)

CONTRARIAN EXAMPLE #5: This Book, Not That Book! While David Green does mention helpful books by Patrick Lencioni and Jim Collins—he’s not a big fan of what is taught at Harvard Business School or the often “conventional” thinking of Harvard Business Review—with one exception. HBR’s “How Winning Organizations Last 100 Years” piqued his interest because the principles align with Hobby Lobby’s vision to impact the next five generations. (Oh, my. I thought I was doing well just to influence my five grandchildren!) 

The HBR article identified the principles of companies that lasted more than 100 years (“Centennials”). They had “three primary elements about both the core and the disruptive edge,” including: a stable purpose, a stable stewardship, and a stable openness. The disruptive edge side of Centennials featured: disruptive experts, disruptive nervousness, and disruptive accidents (their people mingle to share problems and explore opportunities). Would Green be satisfied with 100 years? No! His plan is for 150 years—thus impacting his great-great-great-great grandchildren. (Listen to the three-minute blurb on Libro.fm.) 

Interestingly, Centennials “deliberately open themselves up to invite scrutiny and create pressure” and also “find great things to do and then share them with the world through books, articles and films.” (Memo to Disney's Iger and Chapek: read this HBR article for insights on succession!)

Important! In the book’s epilogue, “Leadership by the Book,” Green emphasizes the “uncommon business practices” adopted by Hobby Lobby and why “Not” is in the book’s title. “As you’ve learned by now, every one of the ingredients in our secret sauce comes straight out of the Bible. In addition, most of the pivotal moments in our history took place after I experienced some divine episode engineered by the Holy Spirit." Don’t skip the first chapter detailing Hobby Lobby’s early days when Green thought of himself as the “Einstein of business!” Once proud and cocky, he was humbled (Daniel 4:37) and burdened in debt. (The company has zero debt today and opens about 50 new stores every year.)

MORE CONTRARIAN, UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM:
#6. “Stock, Say, Salary.” See the appendix for the unconventional approach to family wealth. No “…family member receives money from Hobby Lobby unless they work for Hobby Lobby.” (See who has the say and who owns the stock. Contrarian!)

#7. The Trio of Three Crucial Traits. “God says he looks with favor on those who are humble, who are contrite in spirit, and who tremble at God’s Word.” (These three keys to divine favor are from Isaiah 66:2.)

#8. “None of Our Competitors Do That!” Whew! In the must-read chapter, “Put Employees First, Not Money,” David Green outlines what that looks like. Hobby Lobby closes their stores at 8 p.m. They are closed on Sunday. Stores are open for just 66 hours per week. The minimum wage is $18.50 per hour. Plus…you won’t believe this: all salaried managerial employees (and their spouses) “have an opportunity to attend a first-class weekend retreat on marriage enrichment, most often a ‘Weekend to Remember’ event hosted by FamilyLife.” Hobby Lobby covers airfare, hotel, and all incidentals. “None of our competitors do that.”

#9. “Defer to Your People, Don’t Just Listen to Them!” Green writes, “Today we hear all the time, ‘Hire people smarter than you,’ which I consider excellent advice. But when I see how some of us lead, I want to ask, ‘If the people you hire are smarter than you, then why don’t you listen to them?’” Read why Green goes beyond listening…to deferring. (Excellent! And this reminds me of Dennis Bakke’s wisdom in Joy at Work and The Decision Maker.)

#10. Anointing Versus Calling. In addition to learning about Green’s wisdom on “The One Thing,” you’ll slam on the brakes—to think and pray about the difference between your purpose and your calling and God’s anointing. He writes, “An anointing is a special, God-given empowering that enables us to serve and honor the Lord in a unique way.” Consequently, Green is also the company’s senior vice president of marketing. I love that and I think more CEOs should align their special anointing from God with their job description. (See Chapter 9, “Remember Your One Thing, Not the Shiny Things.”)

Note: I quote Scott Rodin in an ECFA blog on this topic. Rodin writes, “I know of few Christian leaders today who were anointed before they were appointed.” Think about this!

There’s so much more: stunning answers to prayer, the Post-it Notes decision-making methodology for their giving, Hobby Lobby’s 2021 partnership with others to serve 1,800 Afghan refugees in Oklahoma—plus rules, exceptions to rules, and more. This is another must-read!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Leadership Not by the Book: 12 Unconventional Principles to Drive Incredible Results, by David Green and Bill High. Listen on Libro (5 hours, 36 minutes). Note: Jim Seybert, who narrates this book, is also the author of The One Year Mini for Leaders. (Read my review.) And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Read the section in Chapter 11 on “Close Counts” and why investing time on exact numbers is often counter-productive. Balance this with the decision-making styles of the four social styles (Drivers, Analyticals, Amiables, and Expressives). Drivers believe “any decision is better than no decision.” Analyticals preach, “No decision is better than the wrong decision.” So…how do you honor God-given social styles, while helping your people learn versatility (a key component of social styles)? For more, see Book #51, How to Deal With Annoying People, in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books.

2) What other books have you read by company founders/CEOs that relate to your current leadership position? (I’ve recently appreciated books by the founders of Texas Roadhouse, Trader Joe’s, and Chick-fil-A.) Contrast these leadership styles with the "NOT by the book" values at Hobby Lobby.

3) Read these recent WSJ articles about the failed bank, GloriFi, and Tyson's CFO, and then discuss this question: Why does Hobby Lobby invest in marriage enrichment retreats for their store managers? 

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Mastering 100 Must-Read Books - Part 2: Books-of-the-Year

Book #8 of 100:
Call Sign Chaos

For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #8 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. 

Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead
by Jim Mattis and Bing West

Books #6 through #21 spotlight 16 books that I named the Book-of-the-Year from 2006 to 2020. Book #8 pairs perfectly with Leadership Not by the Book (see above).
• Read my review.
• Order from Amazon: Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead
• Download the 100 Must-Read Books list (from John and Jason Pearson)

General Mattis, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, writes: “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate—you can’t coach and you can’t lead.”

Too busy to read? General Mattis writes that the Commandant of the Marine Corps maintains a list of required reading for every rank. “All Marines read a common set; in addition, sergeants read some books, and colonels read others. Even generals are assigned a new set of books that they must consume. At no rank is a Marine excused from studying.”

And I appreciated his humorous humility: “Memo to young officers: I can appear brilliant if I fight enemy leaders dumber than a bucket of rocks.” (I like the bucket reference!)

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BLIND SPOT!  If…I were a pastor, I would put my current sermon series on pause. Then I’d use my Bible and this hot-off-the-press book from Gallup—with 20 thought-provoking chapters. Read Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It. Read more on the Pails in Comparison blog.

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PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. What level of communications and marketing do you need: Good, Better, or Best? (Hobby Lobby focuses on “Better.”) You’ll save time and resources when you can accurately define your customer or donor niche. Need help? Contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

You Should Write a Book!

Issue No. 536 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting asks if you've preserved your memories and defining moments for future generations? Six ideas on why "You Should Write a Book!" And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my two-part review of Henry Kissinger’s new book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy.  


Don’t wait until it’s too late. You should write a book now!

You Should Write a Book!

Looking back, I wished I had asked my grandparents more questions. Learned more about their Swedish heritage. Their defining moments. Their joys. Their mistakes. Their Christian faith. 

I do have a framed black-and-white photo of then U.S. Vice President Richard M. Nixon talking with my Grandpa Carlson (1889-1966) at the Bit of Sweden Restaurant in Portland, Ore. I do remember my grandpa’s hand-written Sunday morning letters to Nixon and President Eisenhower! Oh…to have copies today of those weekly epistles! If only…my grandfather had written a book.

How about you? Are any of those memories and defining moments preserved for you? Perhaps you could still inspire your parents or grandparents to write a book—sharing their hopes and dreams for the next generations. (David Green, the founder of Hobby Lobby, is thinking ahead to five generations: his great-great-great-great-grandchildren.)

In this issue, I’ve curated a collection of sample books and methodologies to inspire you, your family, your colleagues, and maybe your boss—not to write the Great American Novel, but something more personal and meaningful. Enjoy reading how others have blessed the next generations of lifelong learners and listeners. Six ideas and templates:

YOU SHOULD WRITE A BOOK #1: 
Fasten Your Seat Belts!



Some years back, I was in the crowded jetway for a full flight at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Next to me was a tired, middle-aged passenger—a double for Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. He was talking to a young, uniformed soldier and as we boarded, he gave this serviceman a poignant benediction:

“Young man, thank you for your service
—and please enjoy yourself.
These years will be the best years of your life.”

I thought of that moment when reading Ed Sabol’s page-turning narrative from his U.S. Air Force service years (1954-1958). While Sabol had a very meaningful life well beyond those post-high school years (FAA leadership roles, consulting, and more)—you’ll be amazed at the sights, sounds, and serious reflection that this short chronicle delivers. I couldn’t put it down!

A Life In The Day Of: A Strategic Air Command Veteran's Memoirs of The Cold War invites us back to the 1950s. Fasten your seat belts!

• The Flying Coffin. More than 200 crew members “lost their lives in the B-47 and RB-47 by crashing or being shot down by the Soviet Union.” (Your odds: “One in eight airman would not return to base.”)
• SAC. You’re onboard in the cramped quarters of the most modern planes the Air Force used in the 1950s for reconnaissance missions for the Strategic Air Command.
• See the World! Sabol’s passport in his four action-packed years was stamped in Japan, Okinawa, the Marshall Islands, Alaska (not yet a U.S. state!), Turkey, England, and other stops.
• Fill-‘er-Up! Imagine this: gas was 18 cents per gallon in 1955!

Hush. Hush. One dark night in Turkey, Sabol returned to the base with two airmen to finish a project for a morning flight. Yikes! An overzealous guard, protecting the RB-47 planes, fired at Sabol and his buddies! (They survived.) Why? “At three different times during my tenure on this base, Soviet spies dressed in Turkish uniforms were caught on base asking questions related to the U-2 and our RB-47s. They were all caught when they were asked questions that a Turkish military man would have known.”

There’s so much more in this quick-reading book, including almost 100 photos. When you read the last page, you’ll be grateful for the thousands of young men and women who enlisted during those perilous Cold War years. My five grandchildren are now reading this fascinating book because it was written by their other grandfather, Grandpa Ed Sabol. (Thank you for your service, Ed, and thanks for the autographed review copy!)

To order from Amazon, click on the title for A Life In The Day Of: A Strategic Air Command Veteran's Memoirs of The Cold War, by Edward D. Sabol. 
 
YOU SHOULD WRITE A BOOK #2:
And God Did It!


 
Pastor Robert Palmer is now in his 90s and his family is so grateful that he and his wife, Eleanor (1927-2018), wrote this labor of love in 2017 for family members, the legion of church members they served, and pastors everywhere. (Yikes! Being a pastor is tough duty and often involves a moving van or a church member’s pick-up truck!)

Just 140 pages and populated with family photos and memorable stories, Faithful: The Robert & Eleanor Palmer Story is the perfect template for other pastors and ministry leaders who are inspired to write their stories. There are many highlights, including:
• “I was very young—only 18—when I became a pastor. I had so much to learn…”
• His prayer: “I prayed for a wife who could play the piano, sing alto, and love me.” (She did so much more!)
• In 1943, Palmer’s father was the Caretaker/Manager for FA-HO-LO Park—the Assemblies of God camp meeting grounds now called Faholo Conference Center (Faith-Hope-Love). “At that time, we had a 1941 Plymouth. The gas ration board allowed us gas stamps for only 60 gallons of gas. Mother and I drove the whole trip from Kansas…to Grass Lake, Michigan, at 35 miles an hour, and averaged 25 miles per gallon.”

SERMON TOPICS! 
• While pastoring in Galena, Mo., Palmer was bi-vocational and worked at the courthouse—a strategic location for meeting people. The church invited a young evangelist to preach. “There was some interest because some people didn’t believe in women preachers. So, one night she preached on ‘Should a Woman Preach?’”
• He pastored 11 years in Lee’s Summit, Mo. His first Sunday’s sermon title: “Expectations: What You Can Expect From Me, What We Can Expect From You—What We Can Expect From God.” (Brilliant!)
• While pastoring in Ottumwa, Iowa, Palmer hosted the “Happy Hunters.” Charles and Francis Hunter preached on “Divine Healing: Baptism with the Holy Spirit and Deliverance From Smoking.” 

92 BOARD MEETINGS!
• Clearly a lifelong learner, Pastor Palmer attended the “Pastor’s School” in Hammond, Ind., where Jack Hyles was pastor at First Baptist Church. (And yes, Palmer’s church then started a bus ministry with four buses and two vans.)
• Upon retiring in 1992 from their pastorate in Santa Maria, Calif., the Palmers ministered widely to Assemblies of God pastors and churches. He writes, “In one given year, I attended 92 board meetings.” Oh, my!
• Working across the globe in their “retirement” years, they visited almost 50 countries, including Egypt, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Russia, and Ukraine.

What a gift this book is to the next generation of Palmers and Christ-followers. My big take-away? Frequently, throughout these inspiring pages, the memorable stories conclude with one line:

“And God did it.” 

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Faithful: The Robert & Eleanor Palmer Story, by Robert E. Palmer and Eleanor M. Palmer. (And thanks to Paul Palmer for sending me a review copy.)

YOU SHOULD WRITE A BOOK #3:
Grandpa Conversations on Character Traits
 
 

Picture this! A fictional grandfather engages with his twin grandchildren, Nate and Nancy, in a robust conversation that germinates their Top-30 list of character traits. In the process, they learn about the YOUquation toolbox and “the universe’s simplest and most magical secret formula”—and why traits like love, self-respect, control, humor, curiosity, and gratitude are essential for a happy and successful life (What a great exercise with your children or grandchildren!)

The learning is two-way and the twins add a creative wrinkle to “The Serenity Prayer,” retitling it, “The Serenity, Courage & Wisdom Prayer.” That conversation prompted me to search for this toe-tapping number, “The Serenity Prayer Song.”

 
Listen to "The Serenity Prayer Song" (4 minutes).

Bonus Video! By the way, you’ll also appreciate this hilarious/poignant sketch by The Skit Guys, “The Serenity Prayer” (13½ minutes). Click here.

Read the full review here. To order the book from Amazon, click on the title for YOUquation: Living Your Dream—Your Happiness + Your Success, by Thomas M. Dean and  Linda B. Awar. (And thanks to John Moorlach for inspiring Tom Dean to send me a review copy.)

YOU SHOULD WRITE A BOOK #4:
Weekly Emails = Keepsake Book

Last month, The Wall Street Journal featured a “write-your-own-book” process from Storyworth. The headline: “How to Preserve Your Family History, No Awkward Interviews Required. Instead of having to make sense of a recording or spending your weekends digging through public records, try Storyworth, a service that gets your loved one’s memories down in writing.”
 
Storyworth fashions the process “like a conversation.” Step 1: Once a week, choose a question to inspire them to write. Step 2: They'll simply reply with an email, which is shared with you. Step 3: At the end of a year, their stories are bound into a beautiful keepsake book. (Current price for the process and one book: $99.) Visit Storyworth.

YOU SHOULD WRITE A BOOK #5:
“Reach Millions!”

Amazon’s company, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), promises that you can “self-publish eBooks and paperbacks for free…and reach millions of readers on Amazon.” (Well…maybe not millions.) I’ve self-published on KDP (Mastering Mistake-Making, 100 Must-Read Books, Buckets Workbook, etc.) and it’s fast, free, and easy—even for an old, non-tech guy like me. OK, I did have a little help from my son, Jason.) Visit KDP and view the how-to video here:

 
View the 2-minute video on Kindle Direct Publishing.
 
YOU SHOULD WRITE A BOOK #6:
Fill-in-the-Blanks on 52 Topics!



Here’s the fastest/simplest/niftiest version of passing along your history, wisdom, and faith to the next generation. Our son, Jason Pearson, teamed up with prolific author Doug Fields, to write THIS, as in… “I just want you to know THIS.”

Beautifully designed as a tool (really a treasure) for parents and grandparents to think, write, and then pass along to each child or grandchild—you’ll be prompted to share meaningful messages on 52 topics in this fill-in-the-blanks journal. (Read my review.)

To order from Amazon, click on the title for THIS. 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love, by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) While Steve Macchia has written many books, including his latest, The Discerning Life, he waited until he was 60 to write Legacy: 60 Life Reflections for the Next Generation. Chapter 3, “Mistakes Regretted,” is perfect for sharing with teenagers and helping them to avoid a few of life's pitfalls! So…should you write a book? 
2) Judges 2:10 (MSG) reads, “Eventually that entire generation died and was buried. Then another generation grew up that didn’t know anything of God or the work he had done for Israel.” How are you inspiring the next generation to know God, as described by J.I. Packer? 

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Mastering 100 Must-Read Books - Part 2: Books-of-the-Year

Book #7 of 100:
Doesn't Hurt to Ask

For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #7 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. 

Doesn't Hurt to Ask: Using the Power of Questions to Communicate, Connect, and Persuade 
by Trey Gowdy

Books #6 through #21 feature 16 books that I named the Book-of-the-Year from 2006 to 2020. Trey Gowdy’s book shared the 2020 honors with Book #6.
• Read my review.
• Order from Amazon: Doesn't Hurt to Ask
• Download John’s 100 Must-Read Books list.

Trey Gowdy, who served eight years in the U.S. Congress (2011-2019), confesses, “The mistakes made early in my career were many and largely rooted in two areas: not understanding the dynamics of persuasion and not understanding the nature and characteristics of those I was trying to persuade.”

His book is persuasive, not political. Although Trey Gowdy interjects numerous stories from the House committees he served on (or chaired), including Judiciary, Oversight, Intelligence, and the Select Committee on Benghazi, this book is not political—it’s persuasive, in the same way Rumsfeld’s Rules (Book #69) is not political.

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INSIDE MARINE ONE. The World’s Most Amazing Helicopter. What's not to like about a 10,000-foot view of four U.S. presidents from the cockpit of Marine One, the president's high performance helicopter? Read Inside Marine One: Four U.S. Presidents, One Proud Marine, and the World’s Most Amazing Helicopter and you'll have dozens of quotable facts and fun for impressing your friends. Read more on the Pails in Comparison blog. 

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PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. OK, you just refreshed your website—but is it persuasive? Your elevator speech: clever and concise—but is it persuasive? Your Rotary Club talk: short and sweet: but is it persuasive? We can help you persuade! Contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

One Bold Move a Day: Meaningful Actions Women Can Take to Fulfill Their Leadership and Career Potential

Issue No. 535 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a new book for women on smart career moves. It’s also a wake-up call for men! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my two-part review of Henry Kissinger’s new book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy.  


 Is career advancement more challenging for women? Yes…says Shanna Hocking, author of One Bold Move a Day: Meaningful Actions Women Can Take to Fulfill Their Leadership and Career Potential.

Career Counsel for Women:
Must-Read for Men!

What are two of the worst sentences a boss should never use?
• “Can we talk?”
• “Let’s discuss.”

Why? Shanna Hocking coaches bosses to never use these sentences because they are “almost always misunderstood” by staffers. “Always add a second sentence explaining the nature of the discussion so your team members don’t start packing up their offices.”

That’s from the insightful chapter, “Be the Boss Everyone Wants to Work For,” in Hocking’s new book, One Bold Move a Day: Meaningful Actions Women Can Take to Fulfill Their Leadership and Career Potential.

While that’s good counsel, I wondered if a book targeted to women was really needed? Men in the workplace also misunderstand glib comments from their bosses! (Example: I chuckled reading Henry Kissinger’s recent book profiling six leaders, including Nixon. “…Bryce Harlow’s pithy explanation for the Watergate debacle: ‘Some damn fool got into the Oval Office and did what he was told.’” The advice: don't do everything your boss suggests!)

Whoa! The author set me straight! She believes women do have different hurdles in the workplace. So…is this a book for women—or also for men, especially men in boss and supervisory roles? My gut: this is also a must-read for men. And speaking of those hurdles, I’m reminded of another “bold” book published this year, Begin Boldly: How Women Can Reimagine Risk, Embrace Uncertainty & Launch a Brilliant Career, by Christie Hunter Arscott. I titled my review, “Ball and Chain, Barbwire, Tall Grass, Terrain to Conquer, a Wall to Climb Over, and a Swamp To Swim.” Oh, my!
  
I was intrigued by Shanna Hocking’s story because her career path was in philanthropy. She has “20 years of experience raising hundreds of millions of dollars and leading large teams at organizations such as the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Alabama, and Duke University.” Her clients include nonprofits, universities, and family foundations. She keeps an "AttaGirl" folder for notes and accolades, including "the envelope from the first seven-figure charitable gift I closed."

Hocking is very transparent about her early days. In my favorite chapter, “Grow as a Leader,” she confesses that moving “From Peer to Supervisor” was challenging. Before you say yes to your next promotion, read this about managing people “who were formerly your peers.” She writes:

“I lived this: in my first big management role, I went—overnight—from being the friend you went out for margaritas with, to being the boss who did your performance evaluations.” She notes that during her interview process, she was repeatedly asked the same question, “How will you handle the transition from peer to manager?” To get ready, she “read every book and article on this topic, attended multiple seminars, and talked to mentors and trusted advisors.”

The result? “In the first week, I realized none of the advice or learning truly prepared me for going from peer to supervisor.”

The book’s title, One Bold Move a Day, is the author’s approach to lifelong learning. What can you do—every day—to move your confidence and your career forward? She suggests big and small steps. The book is practical, not formulaic. 

In the section, “Decision-Making Strategies for Any Situation,” Hocking administers both therapy and strategies. “It’s not overdramatizing to worry about being wrong. Research shows that women are penalized more harshly than men when they make a wrong decision. In one study by Victoria Brescoll at Yale School of Management, women were consistently judged by their failures, even when they received positive evaluations for their leadership.”

Her six strategies on decision-making include: “Coach yourself as you would a friend,” propose three options—not just two, “Acknowledge the role of emotions,” and more. On preparing for mistakes, Hocking writes, “It’s not the falling, but rather the getting back up (which often makes you more determined and focused on learning) that will support you in advancing as a leader.” 

If you are mentoring an early career woman at work or in your family, this is a helpful book to read together. Look for these gems for bosses and team members:
   • “If you’re not sure how to support a working mother, ask her!”
   • When receiving a compliment, say thank you and no more. “That’s it. It’s about time we all remember that ‘Thank you’ is a full sentence.”
   • On “Clarifying Your Purpose,” in the chapter, “Achieving Your Goals,” the author lists seven days of writing prompts. Example for Day 4, “What projects bring you energy?” (This aligns well with Patrick Lencioni’s latest wisdom in The Six Types of Working Genius.)
   • On “Applying for a Job as a Woman,” Hocking writes, “There is one thing I want to tell all women: you don’t have to meet all the qualifications to apply for a job.”
   • “Who will your new boss be?” (Read why this is so, so important.)

The author provides a helpful template—an “About Me” document covering her leadership approach, leadership philosophy, communication styles, and bullet points on “You Get the Best of Me When…” and “What People Misunderstand About Me.” This reminded me of Marshall Goldsmith’s “Memo to Staff: How to Handle Me” from his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Discover the 20 Workplace Habits You Need to Break (my 2013 book-of-the-year).
 
Note: I encourage leaders and team members to also keep “The 3 Powerful S’s” on their radar (the four social styles, the 34 Gallup strengths, and spiritual gifts). Download my two-page template, “Weekly Update to My Supervisor,” from the Meetings Bucket. And on communication styles, note whether you and your boss are readers or listeners.

MORE!
   • Imagine if more workplaces adopted Hocking’s helpful “NNTR” subject line for emails: “No Need to Respond.” (See the email template in her book.)
   • Have you ever read three pages on “Office Politics?” (Me neither.)
   • “Authority may get the job done, but you’ll find yourself alone at the finish line.” 
   • For a taste of Shanna Hocking’s coaching wisdom, read her numerous articles for Harvard Business Review, including “What’s Making You Miserable at Work?”

To order from Amazon, click on the title for One Bold Move a Day: Meaningful Actions Women Can Take to Fulfill Their Leadership and Career Potential, by Shanna A. Hocking. Listen on Libro.fm (5 hours, 41 minutes). And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
Does your team need to go deeper on how to enrich your workplace—so both women and men thrive and fulfill their leadership potential? In addition to One Bold Move a Day, delegate your reading (or listening) to team members with these other resources:
[  ] Begin Boldly: How Women Can Reimagine Risk, Embrace Uncertainty & Launch a Brilliant Career, by Christie Hunter Arscott (Read my review.)
[  ] Arrive and Thrive: 7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership, by Susan MacKenty Brady, Janet Foutty, and Lynn Perry Wooten (Read my review.)
[  ] Jump: Dare to Do What Scares You in Business and Life, by Kim Perell (Read my review.)
[  ] The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right, by Gorick Ng (Read my review.)
[  ] Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…and Maybe the World, by Admiral William H. McRaven (U.S. Navy Retired) - (Read my review.)
[  ] What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Discover the 20 Workplace Habits You Need to Break (my 2013 book-of-the-year), by Marshall Goldsmith (Read my review.)

Note: If you’re a listener, visit Libro.fm.  

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Mastering 100 Must-Read Books - Part 2: Books-of-the-Year

Book #6 of 100:
The Advice Trap

For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #6 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. 

The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever
by Michael Bungay Stanier

Books #6 through #21 spotlight 16 books that have been named my Book-of-the-Year (2006 to 2020). I began my review of The Advice Trap with this: “Hello. My name is John and I’m an Advice Monster.”
• Read my review.
• Order from Amazon: The Advice Trap
• Download John’s 100 Must-Read Books list.

If you’re still thinking you’re a great coach—and this would be a great book for everyone else—check out page 43, the “Mix ‘n’ Match Advice Monster Table.” The author says “you can’t tame your Advice Monster until you know what sets it off.” There are 12 types of people who activate your monster persona (pick one!)—coupled with 12 situations (pick one!).
   • My deadly combination: someone who asks me for advice—paired with a “time is short” situation.
   • Yours might be: someone who challenges you—coupled with “they keep making mistakes.”

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WHEN WOMEN LEAD. “No single best way to lead.” Julia Boorstin says "We should throw all our preconceived notions about leadership out the window. There's no single best way to lead..." Read John's review of When Women Lead: What They Achieve, Why They Succeed, and How We Can Learn from Them. Visit the Pails in Comparison blog.

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PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. Are you looking for a new role in communications and marketing? One Bold Move a Day (pages 58-61) suggests you ask four questions before you take that new job. We have more questions you should ask. Contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy (Part 2 of 2)

Issue No. 534 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting revisits Henry Kissinger’s new book on six world leaders and six strategies. He says great leaders are either statemen or prophets. Kissinger is 99 this year! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my tribute to Dan Busby (1941-2022) and his legacy of leadership books and baseball books.  


 Margaret Thatcher said Singapore's prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, was “one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished practitioners of statecraft.” Read more in Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy.

PART 2 OF 2: “A Posse of Half-Dedicated Inadequates”

It was challenging to title this review since Henry Kissinger delivered so many great one-liners. Runners-up included:
[  ] “This was no time to go wobbly.”
[  ] “I introduced him, as he asked, simply as a friend from Singapore.”
[  ] "He spent more time in prayer than at the podium."

This is Part 2 of 2 of my review of the expansive book by Henry Kissinger, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy. Click here to read Part 1 of 2, spotlighting three world leaders and three unique strategies: Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, and Richard Nixon.

As I mentioned in my first review, I could have written eight reviews and you wouldn’t tire of Kissinger’s commentary and private conversations with six strategic world leaders:

PART 1 OF 2:
• Introduction: “The Axes of Leadership” (listen to the first 5½ minutes)
• Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of Germany (1949-1963)
• Charles de Gaulle, President of France (1959-1969)
• Richard Nixon, President of the U.S. (1969-1974)
PART 2 OF 2:
• Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt (1970-1981)
• Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore (1959-1990)
• Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the U.K. (1979-1990)
• Conclusion: “The Evolution of Leadership”

So here's a quick look at Kissinger’s analysis of two ideal leadership types: the statesman and the prophet. In this issue: the other three world leaders and their unique strategies. 

PART 2 OF 2: Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, Margaret Thatcher

THE STRATEGY OF TRANSCENDENCE
Anwar Sadat (1918-1981), President of Egypt (1970-1981)

Imagine! More than 25 years of Middle East conflict—and you think you can be a peacemaker? Kissinger notes this about Sadat: “The combination of his quietist personality and his friendship with [President Gamal Abdel] Nasser had limited the usual incentives to develop a political base of his own—and he was never a natural politician. He spent more time in reflection, and in a way at prayer, than at the podium.”
   • Kissinger writes of the Israel/Egypt peace process, “Sadat had just finished reading the letter and folding it when an assistant entered the room and whispered something in his ear. Sadat walked over to me and kissed me on both cheeks: ‘They have just signed the disengagement agreement at kilometer 101. I am today taking off my military uniform—I never expect to wear it again except for ceremonial occasions.’”
   • “Of the individuals profiled in this volume, Sadat was the one whose philosophical and moral vision constituted the greatest breakthrough for his time and context.”
   • Oh, my. Sadat spoke joyfully to Kissinger about a planned celebration in Cairo when “the Sinai will come back to us.” He invited Kissinger to attend, but then said, “No, you shouldn’t.” He explained, “It will be too painful for the Israelis to give up this territory. It would hurt the Jewish people too much to see you in Cairo celebrating with us.” So Sadat suggested Kissinger come a month later. Sadly, Sadat was assassinated on 6 October 1981, before that event could occur.

THE STRATEGY OF EXCELLENCE
Lee Kuan Yew (1923-2015), Prime Minister of Singapore (1959-1990)

Raise your hand if you’ve ever read anything about Lee Kuan Yew, who created the powerhouse city-state, Singapore. (Me neither.) His Chinese heritage and his Cambridge University education “gave him exceptional insight into the dynamics of the interaction between East and West—one of the essential fulcrums of history.” Lee Kuan Yew was a guest in Kissinger’s home (in later years). This “inside baseball” chapter about Lee is absolutely fascinating.
   • “When he became leader of independent Singapore in August 1965, he took charge of a country that had never before existed—and hence, in effect, had no political past except as an imperial subject.” Note: Lee visited 50 countries in 1965!
   • “Greening the city became a high priority.” And this: “Singaporeans (or foreigners, for that matter) could be fined for jaywalking, neglecting to flush a toilet or littering. Lee even requested a weekly report on the cleanliness of the restrooms at Changi Airport—which, for many travelers, would provide a first impression of Singapore.”
   • “In the process, he grew into a world statesman and sought-after adviser to the great powers.” Margaret Thatcher called him “one of the twentieth century’s most accomplished practitioners of statecraft.”
   • Singapore became an independent nation in 1965 under Lee’s “strategy of excellence.” By 1973, “Singapore had become the world’s third-largest oil refining hub.”
   • Built on the shoulders of Prime Minister Lee’s leadership, Singapore was ranked as the second-least-corrupt country in the world for 2021 (a place it shares with Norway and Sweden). Note: Denmark, Finland, and New Zealand are tied for first, according to Transparency International. Visit the website to see where your favorite country ranks!
   • Lee often said that Singapore’s territory was “some 224 square miles at low tide,” and “smaller than that of Chicago.” Then 1.9 million people, the 2022 population is 5.9 million.
   • “Lee was respected by leaders of states far more powerful than his own to a unique degree because he furnished insights that enabled them to grasp their own essential challenges.” In a toast to Nixon at a White House dinner in 1973, Lee said,

“We are a very small country placed strategically at the southernmost tip of Asia, and when the elephants are on the rampage, if you are a mouse there and you don’t know the habits of the elephants, it can be a very painful business.”

   • “On his four visits to our weekend house in Connecticut, he would always bring his wife and generally one of his daughters.” And this! “Twice, at his request, I took him to local political events: one, a fundraiser for a congressional candidate; the other, a town-hall meeting. I introduced him, as he asked, simply as a friend from Singapore.” Oh, my!
 
THE STRATEGY OF CONVICTION
Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013), Prime Minister of the U.K. (1979-1990)

With the UK so prominent in the news recently (Liz Truss is out and now Rishi Sunak is the new prime minister), you’ll be tempted to read this chapter first—and it’s worth your time. Known as the “Iron Lady,” Thatcher was the first female British prime minister and the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century. Kissinger’s analysis is part history, part leadership-under-the-microscope, and part British Political System 101.
   • Yet, in 1990 when Thatcher’s lack of support was imminent, Kissinger communicated his urgent counsel to Thatcher. He writes, “My suggestion did not find favor: Thatcher believed her duty lay on the world stage,” so Thatcher continued with her planned travel schedule to Northern Ireland and Paris. The result: “Thatcher left the management of her campaign to what may only be described as a posse of half-dedicated inadequates.” Having lost the confidence of her party, she resigned.
   • “General Norman Schwarzkopf spoke for many friends of Britain when he demanded of his British counterpart: ‘What sort of a country have you got there when they sack the Prime Minister halfway through a war?’”
   • Believing that the British people would “recognize the difference between sturdy principles and passing fads,” Thatcher said this in a 1983 interview:

“There would have been no great prophets,
no great philosophers in life, no great things to follow,
if those who propounded their views had gone out and said,
‘Brothers, follow me, I believe in consensus.’”

   • “I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together.” Thatcher introduced that famous remark into the political lexicon after meeting Gorbachev for lunch. But did you know that Konstantin Chernenko (1911-1985) was still the Soviet Union’s head of state in 1984? Strategically, she was building relationships with the likely future leader of the Soviet Union.
   • You think Ukraine is unique? Kissinger’s book was published in July 2022, so he has some late-breaking insights on Ukraine. Thatcher had her fair share of squabbles to resolve: the Falkland Islands, plus Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. Kissinger describes Thatcher’s leadership as “steadiness” and “steeliness.”
   • There was more on the crisis front: Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Encouraging George H.W. Bush, Thatcher told him, “This was no time to go wobbly.” Kissinger notes, “The firm tone that Thatcher helped to set during the early days of the conflict was an important factor in the eventual liberation of Kuwait.”
   • While Thatcher was a major player in the historic fall of the Berlin Wall (see Robert Orlando’s documentary and book, The Divine Plan), she “feared that not all the demons of Germany’s past had been exorcized.” Kissinger notes that Napoleon is said to have observed, “To understand a man, look at the world when he was twenty.” Thatcher turned 20 in 1945.

NOTE: In Mastering 100 Must-Read Books, I squeezed in a mention of this Kissinger book while reviewing Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s book, Leaders: Myth and Reality (Book #81). Using the compare-and-contrast methodology from Plutarch’s Lives, he spotlights 13 leaders and contrasts Margaret Thatcher with “Boss” Tweed. (Read my review.)

KISSINGER'S CONCLUSION, "The Evolution of Leadership" (22 pages), is prophetic. All six leaders, he writes, "understood the importance of solitude" for "reading a complex book carefully, and engaging with it critically..." Nixon traveled to San Clemente, Calif. (where I live), for solitude and "deep literacy." Kissinger cautions, "Small wonder that on many contemporary social-media platforms, users are divided into 'followers' and 'influencers'; there are no 'leaders.'"

While I urge you to read Kissinger's fascinating and important book, it would also make a spectacular Christmas gift for a team member, friend, or family member. To order from Amazon, click on the title for Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, by Henry Kissinger. Listen on Libro (19 hours, 9 minutes). And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy. 



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore (1959-1990), wrote in his 2000 book, From Third World to First: “I discovered early in office that there were few problems confronting me in government that other governments had not met and solved. So I made a practice of finding out who else had met the problem we faced, how they tackled it, and how successful they had been.” Does our team have a plan to discover how like-minded organizations have tackled problems that we’re currently facing?

2) Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt (1970-1981), flew to Israel on Nov. 19, 1977, “to global astonishment.” Kissinger writes, “Sadat’s journey to Jerusalem was that rare occasion in which the mere fact of an event constitutes an interruption of history and thereby transforms the range of the possible.” Does our organization have a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or if you prefer, a Big HOLY Audacious Goal) that would be recognized as an interruption of history?

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Mastering 100 Must-Read Books - Part 1: How to Read a Book!
Book #5 of 100:
Know Can Do!

For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #5 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. 

Know Can Do! Put Your Know-How into Action
by Ken Blanchard, Paul J. Meyer, and Dick Ruhe

“The gap between knowing and doing,” declares one of the characters in this short business story, “is probably wider than the gap between ignorance and knowledge.”
• Read my review.
• Order from Amazon: Know Can Do! Put Your Know-How into Action 
• Download John’s 100 Must-Read Books list.

Ken Blanchard, and his co-authors, deliver the gap solution: the power and practice of repetition, repetition, repetition. Plus, “people should learn less information more often, rather than learn more information less often.”  Read fewer books, they preach, and read them not once, but four times. 

They recommend that you follow-up seminar attendance with a weekly one-hour coaching call for six weeks. There’s much, much more—and this 115-page book is a foundational book that will impact everything you read. It’s a must, must, must-read-read-read-read.

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CONVERTED: THE DATA-DRIVEN WAY TO WIN CUSTOMERS' HEARTS  “How to Ask Questions.” Neil Hoyne, the author of Converted: The Data-Driven Way to Win Customers' Hearts, pleads, “Before you ask a question, ask yourself how you’ll respond based on the answer.” If you’ve already read this book (published in February 2022), Ken Blanchard would urge you to read it again—in fact, read it four times! Read more on the Pails in Comparison blog.

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PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. Have you studied the science of repetition and frequency in communicating your mission and message? (Click here for an HBR article.) Do your customers (and donors) want more messaging or less? How do you know? Contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy (Part 1 of 2)

Issue No. 533 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights an expansive book by Henry Kissinger (age 99!) on six world leaders and six studies in world strategy. Profound!  And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my tribute to Dan Busby (1941-2022) and his legacy of leadership books and baseball books.  


POP QUIZ! Identify the six world leaders from Henry Kissinger’s new book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy.

PART 1 OF 2: Kissinger on Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, and Richard Nixon

Help me out, here! I can’t decide which lead sentence to use for my review of Henry Kissinger’s phenomenal 2022 book, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy. So pick one: 

[  ] Yikes! Henry Kissinger wrote this 528-page book at age 99. (What are you doing with your life?)
[  ] Maybe…if Liz Truss had consulted with Henry Kissinger (like Margaret Thatcher did), she wouldn’t now own the dubious world record for serving the fewest number of days (49) as the U.K.’s prime minister.
[  ] “The two questions Konrad Adenauer put to me during our final meeting in 1967, three months before his death, have gained new relevance: are any leaders still able to conduct a genuine long-range policy? Is true leadership still possible today?”
[  ] Invest just five minutes and listen to the first two pages of Leadership, by Henry Kissinger, and then discern: Have you ever heard a more eloquent description of leadership? (Click here for the 5½-minute audio on Libro.fm.)
[  ] Breaking News! Perhaps…Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, by Henry Kissinger, will be my 2022 book-of-the-year.

OK, you’ve selected your favorite lead sentence (thank you)…so what’s the rest of the story? Simply this. Henry Kissinger’s voice at age 99—with his expansive sweep of history, relevancy, and insightful wisdom—is needed now more than perhaps ever before. 

Frankly, I could write eight reviews (eight!) and you wouldn’t tire of Kissinger’s commentary and private conversations with six strategic world leaders:
• Introduction: “The Axes of Leadership” (listen to the first 5½ minutes)
• Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of Germany (1949-1963)
• Charles de Gaulle, President of France (1959-1969)
• Richard Nixon, President of the U.S. (1969-1974)
• Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt (1970-1981)
• Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore (1959-1990)
• Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the U.K. (1979-1990)
• Conclusion: “The Evolution of Leadership”

Kissinger’s big idea: these six world leaders (none from upper class backgrounds), forged new paths after World War II by leveraging six unique strategies. Five of them had devout religious upbringings and “all were known for their directness and were often tellers of hard truths. They did not entrust the fate of their countries to poll-tested, focus-grouped rhetoric.” To his complaining parliament on the Allies’ terms for a post-war Germany, Adenauer asked, “Who do you think lost the war?”

TWO TYPES OF LEADERS. Kissinger discusses “fortunate societies,” during times of crisis, and that “such times call forth transformational leaders. Their distinction can be categorized into two ideal types: the statesman and the prophet.”

So here's a taste of those two leadership types and six strategies. (Note: While I urge you to read this fascinating and important book, it would also make a spectacular Christmas gift for a friend or family member.)

PART 1 OF 2: Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon

THE STRATEGY OF HUMILITY
Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967), Chancellor of Germany (1949-1963)

Kissinger met with Adenauer about 10 times, including when Kissinger was a consultant to the Kennedy White House. He notes that “by an ironic twist of fate, more than twenty years after fleeing with my family from Nazi Germany,” he participated in the shaping of America’s policy toward Germany, then part of the NATO Alliance. Time magazine honored Adenauer as their 1954 Man of the Year. But imagine the task of bringing a defeated Germany back into the European community.
• HABITS. “As a student at the University of Bonn, he achieved a reputation for commitment through the habit of plunging his feet into a bucket of ice water to overcome the fatigue of late-night studies.”
• HUMILITY. After World War II, “instead of indulging in self-pitying nationalism once again, Germany should seek its future within a unifying Europe. Adenauer was proclaiming a strategy of humility.”

THE STRATEGY OF WILL
Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), President of France (1959-1969)

Do you know the backstory on Charles de Gaulle? (There’s hope for all of us.) Kissinger writes that “…leaders who alter history rarely appear as the endpoint of a linear path.” The “resistance movement” was hardly resisting and not yet a movement at the beginning of World War II, but “…arriving in London with effectively nothing but his uniform and his voice, de Gaulle catapulted himself out of obscurity and into the ranks of world statesmen.” His ultimate goal: “the renewal of the soul of France.” (No small BHAG!)

• BISHOPS. “Occasionally exasperated, Churchill once quipped: ‘Yes, de Gaulle does think he is Joan of Arc, but my…bishops won’t let me burn him.’”
• BOLDNESS. “De Gaulle defined his goals in the visionary mode of the prophet, but his execution was in the mode of the statesman, steely and calculating.”
• BOREDOM. “After ten years in the presidency, de Gaulle had achieved the historical tasks available to him and was left with the management of day-to-day events. But such mundane matters were not what had motivated his legendary journey. Observers began to detect the settling-in of boredom, almost melancholy.”

THE STRATEGY OF EQUILIBRIUM
Richard Nixon (1913-1994), President of U.S. (1969-1974)

Nixon appointed Henry Kissinger as his national security advisor (“the second-highest-ranking presidential appointment not subject to Senate confirmation”). Kissinger also served both Nixon and Gerald Ford as secretary of state from 1973 to 1977. He received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam. The Nixon chapter runs 80 fascinating pages.

• SECRETS. Under Nixon’s direction, “The first secret meeting between the Nixon White House and Vietnamese officials took place in [the French ambassador to Hanoi Jean] Sainteny’s elegant apartment on the rue de Rivoli. He introduced us to the Vietnamese with the injunction not to break any furniture.”
• SOVIETS. Seeking to align the Soviet Union with U.S. goals for Vietnam, Nixon met with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. “Pulling a yellow legal pad from his desk in the Oval Office, Nixon handed it to the ambassador, saying, ‘You’d better take some notes.’”
• SUITS. “Crisis management sometimes produces incongruities.” When Kissinger informed Nixon of Syrian’s invasion of Jordan, the President was bowling in the basement of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “Characteristically, Nixon was not prepared to manage a crisis in the White House in bowling clothes. He disappeared for a few minutes to change into a business suit to join [Assistant Secretary of State Joe] Sisco and me in the Situation Room.”

Memo to any and all 2024 U.S. presidential candidates (and future UK prime ministers!): Drink deeply from this Kissinger well of wisdom.

Next Blog - PART 2 OF 2: Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, Margaret Thatcher
(Stay tuned. Three more strategies/three more leaders.)

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, by Henry Kissinger. Listen on Libro (19 hours, 9 minutes). And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy. 



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Note: Play the 5 ½-minute audio from Kissinger’s introduction on leadership and then ask your team this question. Kissinger says that leaders must have courage and character. “Courage summons virtue in the moment of decision; character reinforces fidelity to values over an extended period.” What else must leaders have?
2) Kissinger writes that those close to Charles de Gaulle “began to detect the settling-in of boredom…” Have you noticed this in some leaders—or even in yourself after X years in the same position? What should you do? (Note: Perhaps read The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team. Too bad Lencioni wasn’t yet writing books during Charles de Gaulle’s era!)

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Mastering 100 Must-Read Books - Part 1: How to Read a Book!
Book #4 of 100:
Besides the Bible: 100 Books that Have, Should, or Will Create Christian Culture

For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #4 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. 

Besides the Bible:
100 Books that Have, Should, or Will Create Christian Culture
by Dan Gibson, John Pattison, and Jordan Green

I’m a sucker for book lists, such as Book #3 of 100 which featured a list of 100 business books. Today’s Book #4 highlights 100 faith-based books—with a few surprises.
• Read my review.
• Order from Amazon: Besides the Bible: 100 Books that Have, Should, or Will Create Christian Culture 
• Download John’s 100 Must-Read Books list.

The list of books in Besides the Bible spans the centuries and culture:
• Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe
• The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence
• The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• The Apocrypha
• The Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom
• A New Kind of Christian, by Brian McLaren
• Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller
• The God Trilogy, by Timothy Keller

I was delighted they included one of my all-time favorites, Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson (see my Book #91). Are you reading profitably? I appreciate this quotation from Orison S. Marden on “Intention, Attention and Retention” (noted by Charlie “Tremendous” Jones):

“To read profitably one must keep these three things in mind: intention, attention, and retention. It is worth noting that the word retention comes from the Latin retces, a net. Nets are made so that the smaller and worthless fishes may slip through the meshes. So the mind trained to retention allows trivial things to escape and holds in memory only things of greater importance.” 

 

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THE UNICORN WITHIN: HOW COMPANIES CAN CREATE GAME-CHANGING VENTURES AT STARTUP SPEED Launch in Just 12 Weeks! I was very skeptical of Linda K. Yates’ claim that a large corporation could harness the entrepreneurs in their company to launch a new product, program, or service in just three months. Then…I read The Unicorn Within. It’s very compelling. Read more on the Pails in Comparison blog.

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PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. Many of our clients have leveraged books and eBooks to creatively communicate their mission and stories. If you have a book idea, we can help you from concept to publishing to high impact promotion. Contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Angel for Higher

Issue No. 532 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features the true story of a dad’s two greatest fears—and how Angels for Higher, an extraordinary faith-based nonprofit, popped out of this family’s poignant journey. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my tribute to Dan Busby (1941-2022) and his legacy of leadership books and baseball books.  



“He’s a boy!” Those words marked the happiest moment of Robert Hendershot’s life. But five minutes later…

“What I Feared Has Come Upon Me”

Picture this scene. Trevor Hendershot is interviewing for his first job—and it’s in Major League Baseball! The Los Angeles Angels are hiring an “Angel Team Store Greeter” at Anaheim Stadium. It was a long shot for Trevor, but he was game. And the anticipated 15-minute interview was just rounding second base after almost an hour.

Would Trevor make the cut? Eddie, the store manager, looked over Trevor’s very thin resume (retail training at Trader Joe’s and Walgreens in a “transition” program). So Eddie told Trevor:

“Frankly, I can teach almost anyone how to stock, face products, and do go-backs. That would be simple enough.” Eddie continued, “However, I know from my years in the retail business that there a few things I cannot teach—things like natural friendliness, a cheerful disposition and an engaging personality . . . all wrapped around a beautiful smile. And you, Trevor, have all of that and more! Our first home game is against the Kansas City Royals on Friday, April 6. Can you be there?”

You just gotta read this inspiring, true story! Angel for Higher, by Robert Hendershot with Trevor, captures this homerun moment in 2012—and you won’t believe what’s happened in the last 10 years (actually the last 32+ years).

Robert Hendershot, Trevor’s dad, identifies with Job’s story in the Old Testament. Chapter 1 in Angel for Higher is titled, “What I Feared Has Come Upon Me” (see Job 3:25a). Chapter 2 continues Hendershot’s losing streak (or is it?), “What I Dreaded Has Happened to Me” (see Job 3:25b).

Oh, my. Along with the eye-popping, amazing, and inspiring true stories (and laugh-out-loud humor), you’ll wonder—have you ever met a more transparent author? Gutsy. Honest. 

Robert Hendershot struggled with two huge fears. He admits: “I was forced to at last acknowledge that I’d definitely become the alcoholic I’d always feared becoming; that there wasn’t any person, place, or thing that could save me; and that suicide offered itself as the only possible solution to the nightmare of my miserable existence.”

His second fear: “I had all these hopes and dreams that our child would be everything I never was in life: a great leader, a tremendous athlete, a skilled musician, an outstanding scholar. At the very least, I hoped that our child would be happy and content with who he or she was in life and not have to resort to alcohol or drugs in order to feel comfortable in his or her own skin.”

The happiest moment of his life? It was on May 4, 1990, when the doctor announced “He’s a boy!” Trevor’s parents, Robert and Melissa, were joyful.

But five minutes later—“by far one of the saddest moments of my life” writes Robert—the doctor asked, “Do you know what Down syndrome is?”

And thus you’re drawn into this powerful, powerful story. (I read half the book to my wife, Joanne, and she’s recommended the book to others.) You can’t put it down.

Robert Hendershot writes that Angel for Higher “…seeks to explain how synergizing the lessons I learned from my struggles with alcoholism together with the challenges of raising my son with Down syndrome resulted in tremendous blessings, not only in Trevor’s life and mine…” but also in the lives of his wife, Melissa, and Trevor’s younger two brothers and their wives. 

Trevor is now 32. And since that successful interview in 2012 to serve as the Angel Team Store Greeter, he has also welcomed thousands of sports fans to Anaheim Stadium and other venues including the National Hockey League’s Anaheim Ducks, the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, and the University of Southern California’s Trojans. Trevor is “an ‘Angel for Higher’ if you will.”

But…wait. Read the rest of the story. Robert Hendershot was convicted when he listened to a men’s retreat speaker who said, “Consider what breaks your heart, because that’s where God is calling you into ministry.”

This reminded me of Frederick Buechner’s inspiring insight: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

So in 2018, the Hendershots launched a faith-based nonprofit, Angels for Higher, “to inspire, encourage and help many more sports teams and university campuses to hire many more individuals with Down syndrome.” 

The hope: “AfH was formed with the hope that the lives of many more pre-born babies with Down syndrome would be saved by changing the public perception of young adults with Down syndrome through their employment as Greeters in public venues.”

To learn more, view this short video highlighting the work of Angels for Higher.


Click here to view this 2½-minute video featuring Trevor and the inspiring work of Angels for Higher. 

Today, Angels for Higher is gracing an amazing number of sports venues across the country—and still growing. Those teams have hired extraordinary greeters (Angels for Higher/Hire—get it?). Visit their “Success Stories” pages to view short clips from the Golden State Warriors, Chicago Cubs (my favorite!), Ohio State University, Notre Dame, Tennessee Titans, Chicago Bears, San Francisco 49ers, and more. And read this Associated Press article.
 
I won’t spoil the fun for you—because, wonderfully, Robert Hendershot can take a serious story and make it both poignant and hilarious (often on the same page). 

Read the book to learn:
   • Why Trevor...loved his high school classmates so much, that even though he was bullied at first, the students elected him Homecoming King. (Read his hilarious question to his dad!).
   • Why Trevor...initially refused to provide a sample for his drug test. (Hilarious!)
   • About...Trevor’s impromptu song at a weekend men’s retreat (“for five excruciatingly painful minutes,” writes Robert) and why Trevor and his dad reversed their early morning check-out plans. 

With a confessional—yet redemptive—tone, Hendershot winds in and out and back into his AA journey, and puts flesh on the bones of one of the 12-step mandates—making amends. In Chapter 3, “Even More Undignified Than This,” Robert faced a dilemma on how to communicate his new heart and mission to Trevor. “I knew I had to come up with a way of making a more earnest apology to him through my actions (known in twelve-step programs as a living amends) because actions do speak louder than words.”

So—get this! Robert observed that Trevor always cracked up watching a video of the Three Stooges. In one favorite scene, one Stooge hurts his foot and is painfully hopping around, another (for comedic effect) is doing a slow, Cossack-style dance, while the third Stooge claps and chants, “Hey! Hey! Hey!” You will not believe what Trevor’s dad humbled himself to do every morning with Trevor at his bus stop. 

Funny? Yes! Life lessons for the rest of us? Oh, my!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Angel for Higher, by Robert Hendershot with Trevor.

 
NOTE: To go deeper on how you, your church, and your colleagues might better understand recovery programs, I recommend the 2021 book, Why Can't Church Be More Like an AA Meeting? And Other Questions Christians Ask About Recovery, by Stephen R. Haynes. The author quotes a blogger, “Perhaps if we renamed our congregations ‘Sinners Anonymous’ or ‘First Church of Sinners,’ he writes, this would assist us in making them feel more like AA.” (Read my review.)

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Robert Hendershot was challenged to “consider what breaks your heart, because that’s where God is calling you into ministry.” So…what breaks your heart?
2) If you work or volunteer in an organization or ministry where the obstacles and challenges often outweigh the “success stories,” perhaps you need an inspiring dose of God’s miracle stories—like Robert and Trevor. Who, on our team, should read this book and report on it?

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Mastering 100 Must-Read Books - Part 1: How to Read a Book!
Book #3 of 100:
The 100 Best Business Books of All Time

For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #3 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. 

Your “Leaders Are Readers Champion” can suggest this format: a five-minute summary and then one or two questions for a five-minute discussion. (See the study guide in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books.) Your team will love Book #3:

The 100 Best Business Books of All Time
What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You
by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten

I read and reviewed this book in 2009 and I suppose it influenced me to create my own list of 100 must-read books (but not limited to just business books).
• Read John’s review.
• Order The 100 Best Business Books of All Time from Amazon.
• Download John’s 100 Must-Read Books list.

The co-authors are like fine surgeons in the art of reviewing business books. As of 2009, I had read 21 of the 100 books. I was familiar with another 25—and had always wanted to read about half of those. So the value of this book, for me, is having at my fingertips a two-page morsel on each of the 54 books I’ve never read. If your favorite book is missing, you can recommend it on their website like I did. 

Each book summary includes a memorable quote in big, bold type. Example from The Balanced Scorecard: 

     “If you can’t measure it,
      you can’t manage it.”

Just reading the summary of The Effective Executive, by Peter Drucker (one of my personal Top-20 books), gave me new insights and a new one-liner: 

     “Effective executives 
      solve problems once.” 
 

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WHY CAN’T CHURCH BE MORE LIKE AN AA MEETING? "First Church of Sinners!" Author Stephen R. Haynes quotes blogger R. Brad White who calls AA a place of “healing, support, encouragement, and accountability.” He wonders why “this description does not apply to more churches. Perhaps if we renamed our congregations ‘Sinners Anonymous’ or ‘First Church of Sinners,’ he writes, this would assist us in making them feel more like AA.” Read more on the Pails in Comparison blog.

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PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. Many of our clients have leveraged books and eBooks to creatively communicate their mission and stories. If you have a book idea, we can help you from concept to publishing to high impact promotion. Contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Dan Busby’s Legacy of Books

Issue No. 531 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights the immense legacy of nonprofit books and resources available today because of the vision of Dan Busby (1941-2022). We miss him.  And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my review of Dan Busby’s new book, Before and After Jackie Robinson. Will the Dodgers face the Yankees in the 2022 World Series?


Dan Busby (1941-2022) authored more than 70 editions of 14 different books—nine of them written when he was in his 70s, including Trust: The Firm Foundation for Kingdom Fruitfulness.

Dan Busby’s Board Books & Baseball Books! 

Many leaders and readers of Your Weekly Staff Meeting have graciously reached out to me upon hearing the sad news that my close friend, Dan Busby, lost his battle to cancer on Sept. 28, 2022. He was 81. Heaven’s gain! (Read ECFA’s tribute here.)

So in this issue, I’d like to spotlight and remind you of the immense legacy Dan left for leaders and readers. As a CPA, then a denominational CFO, Dan served ECFA (Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability) for 30 years as a volunteer, senior staff member, and then president from 2008 until his retirement in 2020. He was ECFA’s sixth (and to date, longest-serving) president.


Click here to view the video recording of the one-hour Memorial Service for Dan Busby, Oct. 21, 2022, from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

ECFA’s tribute noted that by his retirement from ECFA, Dan “had authored or co-authored more than 70 editions of 14 different books—nine of them written when in his 70s. He also published many ECFA eBooks.” I’m spotlighting five books below, including four that I had the huge privilege of co-authoring with Dan.

[  ] Trust: The Firm Foundation for Kingdom Fruitfulness, by Dan Busby (2015)
• Read more.
• Order from Amazon.

In the opening chapter, Dan describes “The Low-Trust Penalty.” In low-trust organizations, Busby warned, you’ll see:
   • Internal dissension. “Without trust, the office dissension machine runs at full speed—and divides a ministry against itself.”
   • Disengagement. Staff work in silos and “they shift from joyful service to turf protection.”
   • Turnover. “When trust is low, turnover is disproportionately high—ministries lose the people they least want to lose.”
   • Fraud. “Low trust encourages a small theft; if they don’t get caught, they may take it to the next level.”

The quotations are numerous and memorable—click here for 100 trust quotes for your PowerPoints, speaking notes, coffee break conversations, and tweets, including this from Richard Blackaby: “Our problem as leaders is we do everything we know to do. That’s not enough. We need to do everything God wants us to do.”

[  ] Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom: 40 Insights for Better Board Meetings (2nd Edition), by Dan Busby and John Pearson (2018). Lesson 1 asks, “Would you trust a surgeon who stopped learning? How about a board member who stopped learning?” 
• Read more.
• Order from Amazon.
• Read the 40 guest blogs.

[  ] More Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom: Effectiveness, Excellence, Elephants! by Dan Busby and John Pearson (2019). In Lesson 39, we quoted Donald Rumsfeld, “Meetings are a good place to discover whether an organization might be suffering from groupthink. If everyone in the room seems convinced of the brilliance of an idea, it may be a sign that the organization would benefit from more dissent and debate.”
• Read more.
• Order from Amazon.
• Read the 40 guest blogs.

[  ] Lessons From the Church Boardroom: 40 Insights for Exceptional Governance (2nd Edition), by Dan Busby and John Pearson (2019). Lesson 3, “Guarding Your Pastor’s Soul,” quotes Andrew Murray: “Humility is the only soil in which the graces take root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure.” 
• Read more.
• Order from Amazon.
• Read the 40 guest blogs.
• View the short videos.

[  ] ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson (2019). To introduce the 22 tools, we quoted Peter Drucker: “Although I don’t know a single for-profit business that is well managed as a few of the nonprofits, the great majority of the nonprofits can be graded a ‘C’ at best. Not for lack of effort; most of them work very hard. But for lack of focus, and for lack of tool competence.”
• Read more.
• Order from Amazon.
• Read the 22 descriptive blogs.
• Download the tools and templates.

2 More From Dan Busby—The Baseball “Ticketologist!”

Like all great leaders, Dan Busby also enjoyed hobbies and interests outside of his demanding leadership roles. (Donald Rumsfeld wrote, “I lean toward people who have lives outside of work—an interesting hobby, perhaps, or fluency in a foreign language, for example.”)

Dan's friends described him as a baseball “ticketologist” because of his research, stunning ticket collection, and authorship of books about baseball tickets. I’ve reviewed two of his baseball books.

[  ] Before and After Jackie Robinson, A Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes, by Dan Busby (August 2022). Just barely, the Lord gave Dan time to finish this 400-page full-color gem before his homegoing. Noting the colorful history of  the Brooklyn Dodgers (including rare photos and even rarer baseball tickets), only Dan Busby could also carve out 10 leadership principles (with commentary) in a book about baseball! It’s the perfect coffee table book for your office or home.
• Read more.
• Order from Amazon.
• View the short YouTube videos.

[  ] Before and After Babe Ruth: A Story of the New York Yankees Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes, by Dan Busby (2018). In the 1950s, Dan 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. He often consulted with the National Baseball Hall of Fame concerning memorabilia acquisitions. I've told friends, “Dan was in a league of his own—he was a walking Wikipedia!” You’ll love this book on the Yankees.
• Read more.
• Order from Amazon.
• View the short YouTube videos.

ONLINE MEMORIAL SERVICE. Join Dan’s family and friends on Oct. 21, 2022, for the online memorial service, where along with Gary Hoag and Steve McVey, I will also have the privilege of sharing some brief comments about my very special friend.

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Mastering 100 Must-Read Books - Part 1: How to Read a Book!
Book #2 of 100:
My Ideal Bookshelf

For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #2 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. 

Your “Leaders Are Readers Champion” can suggest this format: a five-minute summary and then one or two questions for a five-minute discussion. (See the study guide in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books.) Your team will love Book #2:

My Ideal Bookshelf
by Thessaly La Force and Jane Mount

The book’s big idea: invite over 100 leading cultural figures (Malcolm Gladwell, James Patterson, and others) “to share the books that matter to them most; books that define their dreams and ambitions and in many cases helped them find their way in the world.”
• Read John’s review.
• Order My Ideal Bookshelf from Amazon.
• Download the 100 Must-Read Books list.

The authors quote David Sedaris: “Tobias Wolff is America’s greatest short-story writer. Sometimes I meet ministers, and I always say to them, ‘If I had a church, I’d read a Tobias Wolff story every week, and then I’d say to people, “Go home.”’ There’s nothing else you would need to say. Every story is a manual on how to be a good person, but without ever being preachy. They’re deeply moral stories; the best of them read like parables.”

NOTE: See Part 11 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. “Hall of Fame Sports Stories” features reviews of five sports books including Dan Busby’s Before and After Babe Ruth. Busby’s latest, Before and After Jackie Robinson, is included in the “Index to Bonus Books,” a curated list of 91 additional books you can read—once you complete the 100 Must-Read Books! 

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CHURCH & NONPROFIT FINANCIAL GUIDES Do you know the “10 Biggest Tax and Financial Mistakes Made by Churches and Nonprofits?” Read ECFA’s 2022 Church & Nonprofit Tax & Financial Guide, and the 2022 Minister's Tax & Financial Guide, both by Michael Martin. The nonprofit guide also includes a list of "10 Must-Read Lessons…” and "10 More Must-Read Lessons…” for board members—featuring content from the Busby and Pearson books. Read more on the Pails in Comparison blog. 

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PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. We had the very special privilege of designing book covers for Dan Busby and ECFA, including the Trust book and four board governance books. We also produced the videos and designed the read-and-engage viewer guides for the ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 1, 2, and 3. Do you need some video or design ideas? Contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team

Issue No. 530 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights Patrick Lencioni’s new book, The 6 Types of Working Genius. Yes! You’re a genius! His book will help you avoid frustration at work, home, and church. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my review of Dan Busby’s new book, Before and After Jackie Robinson. 


Patrick Lencioni believes that “too many people are frustrated and unfilled in their work.” His new book has solutions!

Do We Really Need Another Assessment? YES!

Breaking News! You’re invited to have lunch with Lencioni! 
Sept. 27, Tuesday 12 noon PT (3 p.m. ET)

Bestselling organizational health guru Patrick Lencioni’s new book is available tomorrow! It’s another must-read: The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team.

So schedule lunch with Lencioni! Just register for the “Working Genius Book Launch Event” with Patrick Lencioni. (Well actually, it’s online and you’ll need to bring your own lunch—but, trust me, the event, the book, and the assessment could be transformational for you and your team.) Click here.

4 OPTIONS FOR ELIMINATING WORK FRUSTRATIONS!
[  ] Option 1: Read this review.
[  ] Option 2: Skip the review and click on the 4-minute video (below).
[  ] Option 3: Enjoy an online lunch with Lencioni (Sept. 27, Tues. noon PT)
[  ] Option 4: Lunch-on-your-own! Read the book and/or listen to the book (4 hours).

If you picked Option 1, keep reading.
You will love this hilarious story, told in the classic Lencioni business fable format. (Really, it’s hilarious!)
• It’s extremely helpful—three stages of work and six types of working genius. (Yes! Look in the mirror and repeat after me, “I’m a genius! But…I’m not a genius in all six types.”)
• It’s eye-opening—you will quickly understand why you and your team members are often frustrated with work projects.
• It’s transformational—when you learn what brings you joy and when you should say “no.” And…the Working Genius model is applicable to work, home, and church.

NOT ANOTHER ASSESSMENT! I must admit, I was skeptical.

Really, Lencioni?
The world needs another assessment?
Really?

I’m a big fan of what I call “The 3 Powerful S’s.” I’ve learned and leveraged the 4 social styles, the 34 strengths, and the 23 or more spiritual gifts. (Read more.) Then (oops!), I added one more S: self-awareness and social-awareness (EQ). OK…to be honest…I included a fifth assessment in my new book, Mastering 100 Must-Read Books (See Part 9, “Five Powerful Assessments.”)

True. Assessments can be helpful—but, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s the rare person that can remember their own assessment results. I’ve tested this in workshops with over 1,000 leaders, managers, and board members over 20 years. It’s only cost me less than 20 Starbucks gift cards. (Sad, actually.)

But…I’m betting that The 6 Types of Working Genius book, and the 10-minute assessment, will change the global organizational health landscape. This is not hype—it’s hallelujah! 

To view an overview of The 6 Types of Working Genius, here’s Patrick Lencioni with his short-and-sweet descriptions of the three stages of work and the six types of genius (4 minutes). Click here.


Amazing! Lencioni can summarize his new book in just 3 minutes and 52 seconds! Click here.

Lencioni says there are three stages of work: Ideation, Activation, and Implementation—and that staff meetings often go off the rails because there’s no clarity on which stage is being discussed. The three stages pair with the 6 types of Working Genius:
   • IDEATION: Wonder and Invention
   • ACTIVATION: Discernment and Galvanizing
   • IMPLEMENTATION: Enablement and Tenacity

The book and the website deliver crisp definitions and—gratefully—the theory is outgunned by the humor. This is the funniest book I’ve read all year! (Lencioni’s 2021 book, The Motive, had perfect-timing humor. But this book is hilarious!)

Lencioni’s quick-reading story follows a small team’s aha moment when they discover transformational insights about their personalities and their productivity. The book (and the assessment) will help you discover:
   • Your Working Genius—the two activities that give you “joy, energy, and passion.”
   • Your Working Competency—the two activities we can do “fairly well, perhaps even very well”—yet “we will eventually grow weary if we are not allowed to exercise our true geniuses.”
   • Your Working Frustration—you probably already know these two, but if a good portion of your work is here, “…we are bound to experience misery at work, and ultimately, struggle or even fail.”

I plan to inspire one of my granddaughters to take the assessment. She's a part-time team member at a local coffee shop and I'll enjoy watching her in action with her team members! (And speaking of coffee, don’t skip the metaphors describing how the three categories are like a coffee thermos, a regular coffee cup, and a cup that has a hole its bottom!)

Last week, a friend who is just changing jobs (I’ll call him “Joe”), shared his assessment results (a customized 18-page report):
   • Joe’s areas of Working Genius: Invention and Galvanizing
   • Joe’s areas of Working Competency: Wonder and Discernment
   • Joe’s areas of Working Frustration: Enablement and Tenacity

Note to Joe’s new boss! If you’re looking for Joe to bring a project to the finish line (Tenacity), he may be frustrated. (Read the book to learn how to reconfigure his role so it leverages his areas of Working Genius.)

There’s so much more in this fast-reading book:
• A fascinating example of the six types of genius at work in a church committee meeting! (Meet “Mrs. Church Lady!”)
• How working in your God-given area of genius will dramatically improve your team’s work and your organization’s morale.
• Why “cultural fit” is a big factor—if a team member is currently in the “Frustration” area.
• The four kinds of work conversations: brainstorming, decision-making, launch, and status review and problem-solving (aligned with the six types).
• Genius Gaps: what happens when your team has a lack of Wonder, or a lack of Invention, etc. (Brilliant—and just three pages.)
• Why when you’re working at the wrong elevation of a project, you’ll need a barf bag!
• How the 6 Types of Working Genius will improve engagement and employee retention. (That alone is worth the price of the book.)

Bottom Line: Do we really need another assessment? YES!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team, by Patrick M. Lencioni. Listen on Libro (4 hours, 11 minutes).


NOTE: To take the 10-minute “Working Genius” assessment (not included with the book), visit the website where you can also view a sample report, listen to Lencioni explain the genius model, and listen to the podcasts.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) When hiring new people, the CEO in the story leveraged the six types of Working Genius to focus on the skills needed for each position and then identified them in the people they interviewed. The result? “…we’d never hire again without using the six types.” How does your organization ensure that the people you’re hiring will not be assigned to roles that align with their areas of Working Frustration?  

2) Sure, everyone assumes when you’re new on a team, you have to do the grunt work and pay your dues—before you’re assigned meaningful work. Pushing back—with very strong words (!!)—the CEO changed the culture with this: “What I mean is that people paying dues is ********. Especially if it means doing things they’re not good at in order to prove that they’re worthy of doing what they’re great at. . . . Does that make any sense?” What’s the culture in your organization? Are your new hires doing work that aligns with their areas of Working Genius?

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Mastering 100 Must-Read Books - Part 1: How to Read a Book!
Book #1 of 100:
The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life

For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by spotlighting Book #1 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. 

Your “Leaders Are Readers Champion” can suggest this format: a five-minute summary and then one or two questions for a five-minute discussion. (See the study guide in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books.) Your team will love Book #1:

The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life:
How to Get More Books in Your Life and More Life from Your Books,
by Steve Leveen

The author asks, “When should you give up on a book?” He writes, “A few years ago I gave up on Crime and Punishment. I found it not enough crime and too much punishment.” Generally, Leveen votes for the 50-page rule: “…if you don’t like it after fifty pages, close the book and move on.”
   • Read John’s review.
   • Order The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life.
   • Download the 100 Must-Read Books list.

NOTE: Don’t miss Part 3 in Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. “The Mount Rushmore of Leadership Legends (Patrick Lencioni)” features reviews of four books by Lencioni (Books #22-25). Also featured is Book #15, The Advantage, by Lencioni, which John named his 2012 book-of-the-year. 

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How to Work a Room! Have you ever read a book on how to work a room? Guy Kawasaki suggests you “buy this book if you want to be a savvy socializer,” and adds, “buy a second one for a shy friend!” Read How to Work a Room, 25th Anniversary Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Making Lasting Connections—in Person and Online, by Susan RoAne. Read John’s review on the Pails in Comparison blog.

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PEARPOD | TELLING YOUR STORY. Does your communication team have the right mix of Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity? We can help you assess. Contact Jason Pearson at Pearpod (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Mastering 100 Must-Read Books

Issue No. 529 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting announces a new book from the “Son and Pearson” team of Jason and John, Mastering 100 Must-Read Books: Brief Book Reviews on Leadership, Management, Governance, and Life. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my review of Dan Busby’s new book, Before and After Jackie Robinson. 

Read the “Q & A With Son and Pearson” as Jason pokes his Dad, “Another book? Another forest?” See their list of 100 Must-Read Books here.

Q & A With Son & Pearson on 100 Must-Read Books

Listen in on the conversation that I had recently with my son, Jason, about our new book, Mastering 100 Must-Read Books: Brief Book Reviews on Leadership, Management, Governance, and Life. 

Jason: So, Dad…we wrote our Mastering Mistake-Making book during the COVID marathon in 2021. And now in 2022, another book? (Another forest? 405 pages?) Way to go, but how are you coming on cleaning out the garage? Wasn’t that your High Priority Project after the Mistakes book?

John: LOL. Um. Er. Ahem. The garage is my next project. But…this book was already written (kinda) and so I just had to pull it together, get your ideas/edits/deletes…and endure some gut-wrenching decisions (which 100 books to include—and which books wouldn’t make the cut)—and presto! Another book.

Jason: If my math is correct at publication time, you’ve reviewed over 529 books since 2006—so you’re saying it was challenging to narrow your list down to just 100 Must-Read Books?

John: Exactly! Many books become like old friends. Even now I can remember helpful insights and best practices from many, many books. “That counsel was so, so helpful—how can that book be excluded from my Top-100 list?” Halfway through the selection process, I seriously thought of re-titling this book, “200 Must-Read Books!”

Jason: I get it. You love books. But…can I be honest with you, Dad? I can’t possibly read (or listen to) all of the books that you think I should read! I mean, seriously! I have a day job, a wife, and a family of five teenagers. I do listen to books—but even 100 must-read books would be a daunting challenge! 



John: I know, I know—and, maybe, you’ve just articulated why I’m hoping Mastering 100 Must-Read Books will be so helpful to many leaders and managers. I’ve selected my list—but my hope is that readers and leaders will be inspired to select their Top-100 Books list. I appreciate the wisdom in my Book #1, The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life:

“Do not set out to live a well-read life 
but rather your well-read life. 
No one can be well-read using someone else’s reading list.”

Jason: That makes sense. I certainly have some books that would qualify for my “100 Must-Read Books.” Many of those, definitely, would not be on your list!

John: Let me guess. You’ve quoted Marshall McLuhan since you could talk! “The medium is the message” and “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” But…until you caught my typo in the book’s introduction, I had no idea that his 1967 book was actually titled, The Medium Is the Massage. And until I recently read his bio, I had no idea that his mother was a Baptist Sunday School teacher and his father was a Methodist—but McLuhan converted to Catholicism by reading G.K. Chesterton.

Jason: Good guess—I appreciate McLuhan. Another book on my Top-100 list would be A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative, by Roger von Oech.
 
John: Ah, yes! I remember! That book that was an automatic entry in every paper you wrote in high school! Your one-man crusade to educate teachers about right brain/left brain students was inspiring!

Jason: You were inspired—but most of my teachers (except one) were annoyed! But you should mention more about the two kinds of libraries every person should have. That inspired me. And Melinda and I are trying to inspire our five teenagers (although two of our voracious readers actually inspire us!).

John: Good idea! Steve Leveen is the creative author of The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life: How to Get More Books in Your Life and More Life from Your Books (see Book #1). He recommends a very simple—but profound—approach to building your library:
   • The Library of Candidates - Based on your List of Candidates
   • The Living Library - Your library of well-read friends
   • The Gift of Empty Shelves - “Like an open road, they hold the promise of your future examined life.”

Jason: So, I know your “Living Library” has over 500 “well-read friends.” How many books are on your “Library of Candidates” shelves?

John: Are you asking how often the Amazon driver shows up at our house? (LOL!) Actually, I’m over-blessed with friends, publishers, and publicists who send me a constant supply of books for my “Library of Candidates” shelves. And no—I have not yet given myself the “gift of empty shelves”—but that’s an aspirational goal this year (after I tidy up the garage).

Jason: I noticed that you organized Mastering 100-Must Read Books into 18 parts—and you seem to cover the waterfront from “The Mount Rushmore of Leadership Legends” to contrarian thinkers, to classics…then assessments, and sports stories…and then an interesting collection, “In Search of Global Perspectives.” Do you have a Top-1 favorite book?

John: Nice try, Jason—but I have way too many friends/authors who I would disappoint if I singled out just one book—including the books you’ve authored! I’ve already lost some friends by not including their books in the Top-100. Please tell them I’m sorry…but if they were better writers… (No, don’t say that!).

Jason: If I had to guess, I was wondering if Book #78, Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, might be in the running for your favorite book—since you recently saw the 2022 movie starring Colin Firth. I was also intrigued with your five picks in the section, “Leadership & Management at War.” Or maybe J.I. Packer’s classic, Knowing God, in the “Feeble Faith and Flabby Worship” section? 

John: Both books are good guesses and worthy picks on my short list of favorite books. But I’d also have to mention the quartet of books in “The Final Four” section (#97 to #100), especially the 2022 gem from Steve Machia, The Discerning Life. And, as you know, we had no deadline for this book—and that was a problem, because readers will see I kept adding “Bonus Books” as sidebars. Really, some incredible books arrived in the last half of 2022, and I’ve included some of them—such as Henry Kissinger’s new book—in the “Index to Bonus Books.”

Jason: Some of my clients at Pearpod have asked me to recommend books for their board members, the CEO, and even new employees in their first management positions. What do you recommend?

John: That's really the motivation behind Mastering 100 Must-Read Books. In the study guide (in the appendix) I list seven ideas for all-staff meetings and department team meetings, including:

   [  ] 10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning at Every Staff Meeting: To banish boredom at your weekly staff meeting (or department meeting), feature “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning.” You’ll increase staff engagement and enrich the leadership and management competencies of your team members. At every staff meeting, invite one team member to prepare in advance to spotlight one of the Top-100 books. Over just one year of weekly staff meetings, you’ll introduce about 50 books (and insights) to your team.
   [  ] New Team Members: Browse through this book and pick five books that you have not read, including one book that your supervisor (or CEO) wants you to read. If the books are not on our resource shelf, go ahead and buy them, underline them, and write your name and date in the front of the book—and note your favorite chapter and why.
   [  ] First-Time Managers: Look over the list of books by “The Mount Rushmore of Leadership Legends” (Patrick Lencioni, Jim Collins, Ken Blanchard, and Peter Drucker) and read at least one book by each author, including one book your CEO recommends from those lists. Follow the same instructions (per above) for noting your insights.
   [  ] Experienced CEOs and Senior Team Members: You’ve probably coached and mentored others, using some of these books, over the years. But lifelong learners know that, as Ken Blanchard and C.S. Lewis recommend, there is great value in re-reading a book twice or even three or four times. 

Jason: You’re saying that the discipline of investing just 10 minutes per week on lifelong learning at your staff meeting will expose every team member to leadership and management insights—and, perhaps, make the organization more effective? And…that many of these books will be on the organization’s resource shelf so team members can go deeper?

John: Bingo! Hopefully, leaders have recruited and hired self-motivated team members who are already lifelong learners. They don’t need carrots or sticks—but it’s always fun to throw in a few hoopla! ideas. See the Hoopla! chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets, Book #94. That chapter recommends a book, The Carrot Principle, which features 125 staff recognition ideas. I encourage managers to recognize staff members who model lifelong learning.

Jason: Anything else…before leaders and readers jump into Mastering 100 Must-Read Books?

John: Maybe just one thing. When veteran leaders (who are in the “Leaders of Leaders” category) scan this book, I’d encourage them to review my “Books-of-the-Year” picks (Books #6 to #21 and #99 and #100). Those gems are especially helpful books/reminders for experienced leaders—and also helpful tools when they are coaching and mentoring others. 

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering 100 Must-Read Books: Brief Book Reviews on Leadership, Management, Governance, and Life (405 pages), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson. To download the table of contents (listing all 100 books), visit the book’s webpage here.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Pop Quiz! Name five books that would be on your “100 Must-Read Books” list.  
2) Many teams have a designated “Leaders Are Readers Champion.” This person will order Mastering 100 Must-Read Books and then inspire one team member (rotating leadership at each staff meeting) to prepare a “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” segment—featuring one of the 100 books. (Idea: Offer a generous Amazon gift card to inspire your “volunteer” champion!) 

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Preach It! Read Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It, by Jon Clifton, CEO of Gallup. See John’s review on the Pails in Comparison blog—and why Pearson notes, “If…I were a pastor, I would put my current sermon series on pause. Then I’d use my Bible and this hot-off-the-press book from Gallup—with 20 thought-provoking chapters.” 

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Wondering what book will inspire your communications team? We have recommendations! Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Thriving on Overload: The 5 Powers for Success in a World of Exponential Information

Issue No. 528 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features three options for reading my review of Thriving on Overload: 1) One sentence, 2) One paragraph, or 3) Ten golden nuggets! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my review of Dan Busby’s new book, Before and After Jackie Robinson. 


“We need to acknowledge we are information addicts,” confesses Ross Dawson, author of Thriving on Overload. “There is no shame in it. This allows us to act on it, to work to control our addiction.”

3 Options for Reading My Review of Thriving on Overload

Here’s my problem, friends. According to Ross Dawson, author of Thriving on Overload, “We need to acknowledge we are information addicts.” He confesses, “I certainly admit to being an addict, not adequately able to control my craving for the latest in news and my networks.” Ditto. How about you?

I have another problem. This hot-off-the-press book may be the most important book you read this year—but it would be sinful to serve up a substantial book review for you. I’d just be adding to your information overload! I’d be feeding your addiction. Yikes!

So I’ve thought about three review options. Just pick one option—and move on. Don’t miss the breaking news on your favorite network or news feed!

OPTION #1: Short and Sweet (one sentence)
Trust me—just read the book!

OPTION #2: Motivational (one paragraph)
What if I promised you that this book will dramatically change how you read, view, and listen to the world? (It will.) What if you could transform information overload into an opportunity—not an addiction? (You can.) What if you delegated the reading of this book to a team member—and asked for a summary at your next staff meeting? (You should.)

OPTION #3: Ten Golden Nuggets (for info addicts!)
If you’re still reading—I’ve got some really good stuff for you:

#1. FAST COMPANY says Thriving on Overload offers "the five best ways to manage our information-drenched world.” I agree. The subtitle gives hope: “The 5 Powers for Success in a World of Exponential Information.” 

#2. SIX ATTENTION MODES. The author gave me permission to read the chapters in any order, so I started with Chapter 4, “The Power of Attention.” He writes, “Attention is not one thing; there are six different attention modes that we need to understand and use judiciously to maximize our minds and capabilities.” The six:
   • Scanning
   • Seeking
   • Assimilating
   • Deep-diving
   • Exploring
   • Regenerating

News Alert! No one (including you) can multi-task, per brain science. “The longer you remain in a single attention mode at a time, the more effective you will be.” And this: “How you allocate your attention is a defining choice in life.”

#3. THE FIVE POWERS. Not a blah/blah/blah list of productivity hacks, the book seriously organizes the problem and the solutions around “The Five Powers of Thriving on Overload” (see the page 5 chart). With "Purpose" in the center, the author suggests we “frame our information quests as journeys to help us refine our intentions and discover our path.”
   • PURPOSE: Know why.
   • FRAMING: Map your thinking.
   • FILTERING: Discern what serves you.
   • ATTENTION: Allocate awareness with intention.
   • SYNTHESIS: Cultivate creative integration.

#4. TIMEBOXING. Along with the theory (must-read: “timeboxing”), Dawson delivers helpful habits from leaders and professionals. The founder and CEO of Spotify doesn’t begin his “work” day until 10:30 a.m. He quotes the author of Indistractable who calls timeboxing “the nearest thing we have to productivity magic.”

#5. ZERO VALUE: LAST WEEK’S NEWS. “…one useful rule of thumb to assess the potential value of information is its age. Most of the news that comes out today will have almost zero value or importance past tomorrow. Nassim Nicholas Taleb says ‘to be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.’ Doing this highlights the unimportance and transience of the vast majority of the news.” (Note: The author, however, believes print newspapers still have merit.)

#6. FAKE NEWS AND BAD DATA. Did you know that the University of Washington has a course to help students “learn to detect and defuse” BS? The course was so popular the profs wrote a book with this subtitle: “The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World.” Per the book promo: “Now, two science professors give us the tools to dismantle misinformation and think clearly in a world of fake news and bad data.” Dawson’s call-out, “A Content Filtering Framework” (page 89), lists nine questions for finding gems, including, “Do other authoritative sources corroborate?”
 
#7. OOPS! Noting that “the most credible newspapers in the world make mistakes despite sometimes rigorous fact-checking standards,” the author acknowledges that even “editors are humans not immune to championing their beliefs.” For example, “To take just Nature, by some measures the world’s most reputable journal, there were 49 retractions of published articles in the decade to 2021, and that doesn’t mean that every other article was completely correct.” (For more “oops,” see my review of Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations.)

#8. “UNSUBSCRIBE MONSTER.” In the chapter on the power of filtering, the author quotes a Nokia team member who relies on newsletters extensively to scout for relevant trends. “I’m paying somebody else to do the scanning for me . . . except the newsletters are free.” (Smart person!) Leslie Shannon says she will “look at everything once…” to assess them. BUT! She adds, “I’m an unsubscribe monster…” (I kinda hope you’ll skip this nugget!)

#9. FIND 20 GOOD PEOPLE. “Many of the information masters I interviewed for this book mentioned numbers around 20 as a guideline for their tightly curated lists.” (What 20 do you religiously follow on Twitter, social media, podcasts, etc.? Or is it 100?)

#10. DOOMSCROLLING! You may know people who compulsively follow upsetting news—not a good thing! (“Doomscrolling” was named a word-of-the-year in 2020!) What information serves you? “The ability to discern the information that best serves you shapes the quality of your life,” writes Dawson. Thus, his entire book functions as a trail guide for a more disciplined and effective use of information in a “world of exponential information.” 

NOTE: Halfway through this book—it dawned on me. The concepts and ideas (especially on the power of purpose) are so helpful, I’ll do a second read of this book—applying the principles that I just now learned. (Did I mention? This is an important book.)

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Thriving on Overload: The 5 Powers for Success in a World of Exponential Information, by Ross Dawson. Listen on Libro. (And thanks to Fortier PR and the publisher for sending me a review copy.)



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Oh, my. This will blow your mind. In the chapter, “The Power of Framing,” Thriving on Overload mentions a website, “Jerry’s Brain,” the largest public “brain” in the world. Visit the website and view the 13-minute YouTube video. OK, team—how do we (and how should we) organize the zillion pieces of information we review, scan, skip, or do deep-dives on?
2) “What is the one thing you can do to improve your relationship with information in the six spheres of your life (Identity, Expertise, Ventures, Well-being, Society, Passions)? That’s just one of several powerful questions/exercises at the end of each chapter in Thriving on Overload. On the same fill-in-the-blanks exercise, the author asks you to allocate a percentage of your attention that goes to each of the six spheres of your life. Read the chapter on purpose and then discern where your faith-based priorities might land—and how much time you allocate to improving your relationship with faith-based information.

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4 Resources for Info Overload!

Over at the Pails in Comparison blog, I feature a main book and then “compare and contrast” it with other books I’ve reviewed. So…I’m borrowing that methodology for this issue. Four books:

• The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, by Steven B. Sample (1940-2016) – (read my review) - The author, former president of USC, was addicted to newspapers. He once went six months without reading one—but stayed current through the art of listening.

• Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives, by Richard A Swenson, M.D. (read my review) - The margin doctor suggests you record this message on your phone: “Please wait for the beep and hang up.”

• The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life: How to Get More Books in Your Life and More Life from Your Books, by Steve Leveen (read my review) - When should you give up on a book? “A few years ago I gave up on Crime and Punishment. I found it not enough crime and too much punishment.” Generally, Leveen votes for the 50-page rule: “…if you don’t like it after fifty pages, close the book and move on.”

• The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan (read my review of my 2016 book-of-the-year) - On time-blocking: "My recommendation is to block four hours a day. This isn't a typo. I repeat: four hours a day. Honestly, that’s the minimum. If you can do more, then do it."

By the way! According to Thriving on Overload, “…our lasting love for print books suggests they will be with us for decades to come. In 2021 over 825 million print books were sold in the United States, the most since the rise of e-books, and more than four times digital format sales.”  

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An Idea Machine! Ready to read outside your narrow niche? Enjoy this one: A Game Maker's Life: A Hall of Fame Game Inventor and Executive Tells the Inside Story of the Toy Industry, by Jeffrey Breslow. Read John’s review on the Pails in Comparison blog.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are you learning from 20 “good people”—those who are savvy and thoughtful communicators? We can help.   We can help! contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Before and After Jackie Robinson: A Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes

Issue No. 527 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights a colorful and massive book, Before and After Jackie Robinson: A Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes, by “Ticketologist” Dan Busby. Fascinating! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”


View the 3-minute tribute to Jackie and Rachel Robinson at the 2022 MLB All-Star Game at Dodgers Stadium on July 19. (With cool graphics!) 

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“Ticketologist” Dan Busby on Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers

“Chills!” That’s how fans described Denzel Washington’s tribute honoring the trailblazer, Jackie Robinson, at the 2022 MLB All-Star Game at Dodgers Stadium on July 19. It just happened to also be the 100th birthday celebration for Jackie Robinson’s widow, Rachel (she wore No. 42). 

Denzel Washington’s solemn salute to both Jackie and Rachel commemorated that monumental day on April 15, 1947, when Robinson broke baseball’s modern color barrier. Washington spoke of Jackie’s “supreme talent and unshakable character." (See the three-minute tribute above.)

But there’s more to the Jackie Robinson story—more than you ever knew. So with impeccable timing, my good friend, Dan Busby, has just hit a homerun with his stunning hot-off-the-press book, Before and After Jackie Robinson, A Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes. 

 

 

Baseball tickets? Yes. Remember the concept of actual tickets (before the turnstiles demanded proof on your digital device)? The New York Times recently asked Dan Busby what he thought about the transition to digital tickets. His response, “Save a tree, lose a memory.”

And the memories. Oh, my. As Busby showcases in his colorful stroll through Brooklyn’s baseball history, baseball tickets and passes are a unique and fascinating gateway into the cheers, jeers, fears, and more of Major League Baseball. Play ball! (And by the way, the 2022 MLB World Series begins on Oct. 28. The Los Angeles Dodgers are lookin’ pretty good!)

Before and After Jackie Robinson, however, creates a huge problem for me! The book is 400 pages (with hundreds of photos and images) and there’s so much I want to spotlight. Yet calling this gem a “book” is sorely inadequate. This full-color massive masterpiece is one-of-a-kind. You’ll give it a place of honor on your coffee table at home and your reception area at work. But I need a double-header eNews to do this review justice. Or maybe I can knock out a double or a triple—or even a few poignant bunts—to entice you to order the book. It’s absolutely fascinating! I had no idea!

TRUE OR FALSE?
[   ] T/F #1: Jackie Robinson’s achievements—against all odds—were many, including Rookie of the Year in 1947 and six-time All-Star in his 10-year career. He played in six World Series, including 1955 when the Brooklyn Dodgers won the Series. 
[   ] T/F #2. In 1947, sportswriter Tommy Holmes wrote, “Opening day has come and gone and nothing at all terrible happened because a colored man played in a big league lineup....” 
[   ] T/F #3. Jackie Robinson wore Number 42 (see the movie). “Number 42 is now the most celebrated number in baseball. Each year on April 15, every player in the Major Leagues wears 42 and no one wears it the rest of the year.” (That’s just one of 22 “Quotable Quotes” in the book’s introductory appetizers--or is it? True or False?)

Many of my readers will remember that Dan Busby served as ECFA’s president from 2008 until his retirement in 2020. But many will be surprised to learn that he’s also been a baseball memorabilia collector and researcher for over 60 years. He’s recognized as one of the premiere baseball “ticketologists.” 

BUSBY’S “TICKETOLOGY” RESEARCH delivers fascinating snippets and Dodger memorabilia on almost every page:

• Musical Depreciation Night? An upper grandstand ticket for Aug. 13, 1951, cost just $1.75. But free admittance was offered to any fan who brought a musical instrument for “Musical Appreciation (or Depreciation) Night.” Read more on page 269 to learn why the local musician’s union had issues with the Dodgers’ popular “Sym-Phony Band” and why the union “had threatened to throw a picket line around Ebbets Field.” (Will this tuba fit through the turnstile?)

• The Mystery of Norman Rockwell’s “The Three Umpires.” According to Busby, Norman Rockwell painted five covers for The Saturday Evening Post in 1949. (Lifetime, he painted 259 covers for The Post!) Yet Busby (aka Detective Busby!) surmised that the Dodgers-Pirates game at Ebbets Field that Rockwell depicted, featuring three umpires and impending rain, wasn’t quite accurate. Had Rockwell perhaps taken “poetic license” with the finer points of baseball? Busby wrote to Rockwell and the famous illustrator sent Dan a personal and gracious response on Dec. 1, 1970. (Norman Rockwell’s letter is featured on page 385.)

• Last Game at Ebbets Field. On page 375 is a ticket for Sept. 24, 1957—the Dodgers’ last game in Brooklyn. Organist Gladys Gooding, known sometimes to greet the umps with “Three Blind Mice,” had entertained the fans at Ebbets Field from 1942 through this final game. (Interestingly, the Dodgers had the first organ in MLB.)

In addition to narrating Dodger history—and MLB history—“through the lens” of the thousands of baseball tickets that Dan has collected over the years, Before and After Jackie Robinson is a chronological cavalcade of culture, history, leadership, management, the art of the deal, fundraising, real estate management, civil rights, the economy, advertising, finance, and so much more. (In 1919, a war tax was added onto U.S. professional sporting event tickets priced at 40 cents or more to help fund the $25 billion budget for World War I.)

10 LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES. Only Dan Busby could carve out 10 leadership principles (with commentary) in a book about baseball! He lists 10 favorites, including:

“Leaders know that fundamental decisions must always allow for the changes that inevitably come.” Busby adds, “When Ebbets Field in Brooklyn was constructed in 1912-13, Charles Ebbets made a major planning decision. He assumed transportation would always be by trolley in Brooklyn and/or he thought automobiles were just a passing novelty.” (Oops!) More leadership insights:
• “Leaders know that dwelling on negatives is counter-productive.” (In 1938, Larry MacPhail became the GM. “He joined a sinking ship.”)
• “Leaders keep their eyes on the goal during tough times.”
• “Leaders briefly enjoy honors but quickly return to accomplishing what will become their legacy.” (“Little did Jackie know that black parents would soon name their children, boys and girls, after him.” And this: “Babe Ruth changed the way baseball was played; Jackie Robinson changed the way Americans thought.”)
• “Leaders are willing to accept criticism.”
• “Leaders know that hearts can change.”
• “Leaders Innovate! Innovate! Innovate!” (Examples: Lights for night games and radio broadcasts with Red Barber.)
• “Leaders focus on big issues but they don’t ignore the small ones.”
• “Leaders take calculated risks.”

“Leaders recognize the power of God” is Busby’s tenth leadership principle. “More than a pastor to Jackie, [Rev. Carl Downs] became his close friend. With his help, Jackie understood that faith was not only about praying; it was also about struggling daily to overcome social injustices. Jackie started praying each night before he went to sleep. When he reached the Major Leagues, Robinson developed a nightly ritual of praying and kneeling at his bedside. ‘It’s the best way to get closer to God,’ Robinson said, and then he added with a smile, ‘and a hard-hit groundball.’”

Last year I resolved to venture out into the fertile fields of other disciplines (see my Mistake #3: “Reading Too Narrowly—Stuck in My Lane”) and while I so appreciate leadership and management insights, I’m becoming an enthusiast for a wider lifelong learning journey. Dan Busby’s book checks all of those boxes—and more! Play ball!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Before and After Jackie Robinson, A Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes, by Dan Busby.

BONUS BOOK! Dan Busby is also the author of Before and After Babe Ruth: A Story of the New York Yankees Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes (see below).  

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Before and After Jackie Robinson features dozens of quotable quotes you’ll share with friends, including this one from announcer Harry Caray, following Game 7 of the 1955 World Series: “As if carrying a personal crusade, [Jackie Robinson] succeeded in breathing life into a Dodger team which from the start of this Series seemed destined for the embalmer.” While your organization probably preaches “There is no ‘I’ in team”—are you intentional about recruiting those gifted men and women who can be catalysts for breathing new life into your programs, products, and services? 

2) While baseball is serious business to many—it’s also highly entertaining and Before and After Jackie Robinson is loaded with memorable ideas for the Hoopla! Bucket. Abe Stark was 22 when he opened his clothing store. In 1924, his big sign in the outfield at Ebbets Field “…offered players a suit of clothes if they could hit the sign with a fly ball.” Many did! Does your organization have the right mix of fun and hoopla! for your team members and customers?  

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Before and After Babe Ruth
by Dan Busby

In the 1950s, Dan 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!”

Before and After Babe Ruth: A Story of the New York Yankees Told Through the Lens of Tickets and Passes (2018) is a gorgeous coffee table book that 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! Click here to read my review.

For more on Busby’s fascination with baseball, visit his Baseball Ticket Man website and his YouTube channel of short videos.
 
P.S. And for my fellow Chicago Cubs fans (I endured 21 winters in Chicago, but some wonderful days at Wrigley Field)—just a reminder that we won the World Series in 2016 (on my birthday!). Click here to read my review of The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse, by Tom Verducci. 

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For the Umps and Us! Read Why We Argue and How to Stop: A Therapist’s Guide to Navigating Disagreements, Managing Emotions, and Creating Healthier Relationships, by Jerry Manney. The author’s counsel: “…practice not going to every argument you’re invited to.” Read John’s review on the Pails in Comparison blog. 

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Dan Busby writes that leaders “innovate, innovate, innovate!” If you’re singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” but no one’s coming—it may be time for fresh innovation.  We can help! contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise from the Ashes

Issue No. 526 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a contender for my 2022 book-of-the-year honors. (It’s a poignant page-turner.) And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”


The Paradise High School football team after the Nov. 8, 2018, devasting fire: “The first workout since the fire was filled with a bunch of kids with no sweats, no cleats, and no chance.” (No way!)

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No. No. No Way. (Way!)
Last week, after reading the prologue and the first chapter of Paradise Found—I couldn’t put it down. Literally. Even though I’m “retired” (whatever that means), I took the day “off”—and read the book in one day. Never done that before.

Los Angeles Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke has gifted us with a stunning book, Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise from the Ashes. On Nov. 8, 2018, the friendly folks in Paradise, California, watched their town burn to the ground at the rate of 80 acres per minute. The devasting toll:
   • 84 lives lost!
   • In a day, the population dropped from 26,800 to 2,034!
   • 20,000 burned-out cars, 19,000 homes lost!

Of the 104 football players, 95 of the Paradise High School Bobcats had lost their homes. A playoff game for the next night was cancelled. Coaches, athletes, faculty, students, and parents—lives and futures in total disarray. Could the town and the team recover? No way.

Paradise, a mountain village in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains (90 miles north of Sacramento and 12 miles east of Chico), was also the home of the right person at the right time: Head Football Coach Rick Prinz. A former youth pastor with a master’s degree from Biola University, he discovered his calling was coaching. 

Bill Plaschke’s narrative launches like a James Bond movie. You’re in those cars and trucks fleeing the fires—nearby propane tanks are exploding while students arrive at school and parents arrive at workplaces. What to do? For many:
   • No time.
   • No time to return home and pack.
   • No cell phone connection to family members.
   • No carpool lane—jammed, bumper to bumper traffic. Chaos!
   • No escape route—heavy, suffocating smoke.
   • No chance to get gas. Yikes.
   • No way.

But earlier that morning, before the panic and evacuation, Coach Rick Prinz was still hopeful. At 8:10 a.m., he texted the varsity team that football practice would still begin at 3:00 p.m. No way.

In a flash, everything changed and—trust me—you won’t skip a page in this page-turner. Eventually, some families moved to San Diego and to Arizona and some to nearby Chico—but snagging even a modest apartment was nearly impossible. Could the team and the town recover? Would there be a 2019 football season—perhaps a revenge/redemption mission? No way.

But…the coach with the calling prayed. And in borrowed buildings and a distant hope and more prayer, the high school rose from the ashes: Paradise Found. Kinda. The powerful themes in this breathtaking account prompt both hallelujahs and tears. (Last week, I tried to read several poignant paragraphs to my wife, Joanne. No way. Too choked up.)

Fast forward to February 2019 and the school’s new location in an industrial warehouse in Chico. However. “Once school restarted…many of the teens drifted away or just plain disappeared. They couldn’t take the ninety-minute drive from some distant town where they lived in some tiny mobile home. Some of them moved out of state. Some of them couldn’t get out of bed.” Most lived within a three-hour radius of the new school location “…in a variety of accommodations—apartments, trailers, rental homes, hotels—that were paid through insurance or life savings. The players were everywhere and nowhere.”

In 2018, the varsity squad was 76 strong. Now…just 22 showed up—“exactly enough for one offense, and one defense, with no subs.” The first varsity football practice landed on a borrowed vacant lot next to the Chico airport. 

“The ‘field’ was a weed-choked lot filled with rocks and trash, food wrappers and soda cans, and giant holes next to piles of dirt. ‘Football’ was also a misnomer, as most of the kids were wearing old blue jeans and casual shoes. Even if they had gear, there was no place to dress.” The author adds, “The first workout since the fire was filled with a bunch of kids with:
   • no sweats,
   • no cleats,
   • and no chance.”

Honest…when their first practice began—you guessed it:
   • No football!

But…maybe hope could eke out. The San Francisco 49ers invited the team to their Nov. 12, 2018, Monday night game against the New York Giants. After a three-hour rickety bus ride to the game, those tired, disheveled young athletes emerged into the cold air (low 40s) with no coats. “They didn’t forget them; they simply didn’t have them anymore. Their winter clothes had burned up in the fire.” (No way! The Bobcats athletic director “swooped to the rescue” with a box of mismatched Paradise sweatshirts “pilfered from the student store earlier that morning.”)

Not the 49ers, but the Paradise football team was cheered by the 69,409 fans that night. Eli Manning’s team beat the 49ers in a heartbreaker, 27-23. “…but the Paradise Bobcats didn’t care. They knew loss, and this wasn’t it. This was relief. This was escape.” 

Invited to appear on the postgame show, the players met “a tearful Jeff Garcia, a retired quarterback who’d been the franchise’s field general in the early 2000s.” He, like them, had experienced being “a tough kid in a small town.” So Garcia gently inspired them to rebuild and “…rally the troops and rally the town, right? Rally the town!”

Coach Prinz and the team wondered, “Rally the town? But didn’t they need a place to sleep first?” And suddenly…a bigger challenge emerged, perhaps a movement. “Rally the town!”

And so with prayer and persistence (did I mention prayer?), the former youth pastor now head football coach began strategizing both the plays and the process for the rebirth of Paradise.

At the Green and Gold intrasquad scrimmage (public invited), two weeks before the fall opener, “…a recording of singer-songwriter Phillip Phillips took over, the wistful sounds of his song, ‘Home,’ playing over the public address system.” Listen here.


Powerful! Phillip Phillips sings, “Just know you’re not alone, ‘cause I’m gonna make this place your home.” Listen here.

One reviewer called this book, “Friday Night Lights meets Unbroken.” My summary: “If you appreciated The Boys in the Boat—and the stunning master class on teamwork—you won’t stop talking about Paradise Found.” Could this be my 2022 book-of-the-year? (Stay tuned.)

The leadership moments in virtually every short chapter are beacons of hope, such as the players’ commitment ceremony: “…the annual Prinz ritual in which each kid stands in front of the group and states his personal goal, team goal, and character goal for the coming season. They write down these goals on cards, which Prinz saves.”

But in 2019, there’s a twist: “When the players finished their commitments, the coaches took over the microphone. They’d also filled out cards. In past years, their part in the ceremony had been subdued. But this year was different. This year they turned the simple declarations into sermons.” A young assistant coach affirmed, “I’m proud to be part of this history that’s going to happen. This program is a huge part of rebuilding this community. I take it not as a burden but as an honor.” Whew!

Another coach wore sunglasses to hide his emotions. His words punctuated the moment: “I feel like God chose us.” Powerful!

I’ve read hundreds of Plaschke’s sports columns in the L.A. Times over the years and he never disappoints (read the tribute to his Mom). Ditto this book. Plaschke masterfully weaves the sobering survival stories of players, coaches, and cheerleaders into, over, and around the team’s 2019 season. (Spoiler alert: the Bobcats were a very good team!)

You must read this book—and when you do, watch for these gems:
   • SLOGANS. The team slogans: “CMF: Crazy Mountain Folk” and my favorite, “We Just Hit People!”
   • SKILLS. The athletic director’s persuasion skills in cajoling other football teams to compete against the Bobcats. (Lose/Lose: If other teams beat the up-from-the-ashes Bobcats, that’s not a good look. If other teams lose, it will look worse!)
   • SPEECHES. The incredible, inspiring, and uplifting pre-game and halftime speeches by Coach Prinz and other coaches and the traditional “Glory Hill Run” with the motivational talk about Cortés and the 1519 conquest of Mexico. “And here the players shouted from the bottom of their ragged shoes to the top of their donated T-shirts: ‘Burn the ships!’”
   • STADIUM. Returning (amazingly) to their own stadium for their first home game (on new grass!) with 5,000 ecstatic fans, yet...no restrooms (Porta-Potties only).  And no full marching band (just half-the-size with three tubas, a lonely trumpet, the band instructor on the drums—and only 14 other instruments!)
   • STILLNESS. The pregame team prayers (did I mention prayers?)
   • SHE! Read how coach Prinz inspired and encouraged a trainer’s assistant to try out for the field goal kicker position. She (yes, she) earned the job—after following Coach Prinz’s contrarian counsel.
   • SPIT. The “Paradise Medical Plan” vs. the Immediate Care Plan. Injured? Don’t go to Immediate Care—you’ll be out for two weeks. Instead see our trainer: “Us mountain boys, we put a little mud on it, a little spit on it, and we go back to work.”
   • SCARS. Must-read: the 21 quotations, from John Milton’s Paradise Lost—appetizers for the meat to follow in every chapter including, “Purge off this gloom, the soft delicious air, to heal the scar of these corrosive fires.”

And the cheerleaders! Oh, my. “In some ways the Paradise cheerleaders faced greater challenges than the players did. They had to stifle their anger and stomach their personal losses while putting on smiles for a town that desperately needed smiles.” The senior cheerleading captain, while running for her life on Nov. 8, dashed back into her house to retrieve her cheer uniform. 

At games, she led the cheers: “Circle up, P-Town, you know, you know; P-Town, the green and gold…” and the captain “shouted those words as if they were Scripture” and “clung to those words as if they were salvation.” Hope found? No way! Way!

Wow! I can’t imagine that any other book could so captivate my heart and mind for an entire day. I couldn’t put it down. Maybe Paradise Found touched those warm and raw emotions when I earned my varsity letter as #35 on Seattle’s Queen Anne High School football team (ACL injury and all). Or maybe…it was the sometimes rough “locker room” language? (Warning: the author quotes people verbatim, yet my Baptist values gave the crude vocabulary a pass. What angry words would I spew in similar circumstances?) But…maybe it was the praying. A plethora of prayers.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise from the Ashes, by Bill Plaschke. Listen on Libro.fm (8 hours, 2 minutes). 



P.S. BREAKING NEWS! Read more about this devasting fire in the article, “Inside the Investigation," in the Aug. 27, 2022, edition of The Wall Street Journal. “The fire was entirely out of control. At its fastest, it engulfed the equivalent of 80 football fields a minute, by some estimates. As the evacuation process began, thick black smoke took on the hellish orange hue of the flames. Escape routes became choke points, lines of cars inching along melting asphalt.” (Excerpted from the new book, California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric—and What It Means for America’s Power Grid,” by Katherine Blunt.)

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) High school football coach Rick Prinz was the right person at the right time. A former youth pastor, he discovered his calling in coaching—and he embraced it. Frederick Buechner (1926-2022) wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” How intentional are we in helping and inspiring our team members to embrace their callings?

2) CRISIS BUCKET EXERCISE! Oh, my. Most of your staff just lost their homes and their possessions in a horrific flood. Your entire office is underwater. You’ve assembled the team on high ground to assess, plan, and bring comfort. With no time to prepare (no way), you pull out your best motivational pep talk. Will it be adequate? Will it be enough? (It’s a little late to learn character in a crisis.) Are you ready?   

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From the YouTube interview with Bill Plaschke: “That’s crazy! How you gonna have a football team with no town?” Watch the entertaining interview with Bill Plaschke on the story behind the story of Paradise Found. (Click here for the 51-minute interview.)

Bill Plaschke chats about writing Paradise Found
What he learned from Coach Rick Prinz, his favorite column ever, Kobe and Shaq, the craft of writing, and his biggest fan—his mother! 

Fascinating! On Nov. 17, 2021, just after Paradise Found was published, Bill Plaschke was interviewed by Christian Stone, L.A. Times executive sports editor.

In addition to his color commentary on this unique writing project, Plaschke talks about his amazing 33 years with the L.A. Times, including 25 years as a columnist. (It’s a master class for writers and communicators.) And get this: already an experienced sports writer when he joined the L.A. Times team, the editors rewrote his story leads for Plaschke’s first eight articles! 

Listen to “Ask a Reporter” with columnist Bill Plaschke (51 minutes on YouTube). Click here. 

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Get Ready for Your Next Crisis! Read Connectable: How Leaders Can Move Teams From Isolated to All In, by Ryan Jenkins and Steven Van Cohen. Why? Patrick Lencioni urges, “Every leader and manager needs to read this.” Read John’s review on the Pails in Comparison blog.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Prepared for your next crisis? You’ll need more than a clever slogan. Is your communication contingency plan in place to bring hope to your team and your constituency?  We can help! contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

2 THINKING BOOKS: Both/And Thinking & A New Way to Think

Issue No. 525 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features two new books on thinking. Contrarian page-turners—with paradoxical thinking. They'll mess with your comfort zones! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”


Enjoy these reviews of two contrarian books on thinking. (Read one and delegate one.) The insights just might launch you out of your status quo chair!

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2 CONTRARIAN BOOKS ON THINKING!

*Here’s an idea. Next year during Berry Season on Fogo Island in Newfoundland, Canada, let’s book all 29 rooms at the innovative Fogo Island Inn—and enjoy a THINKERS WEEKEND RETREAT. Your homework: read these two new books on thinking. (Who will plan this for us?)

THINKING BOOK #1 OF 2: A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness, by Roger L. Martin

Imagine! You’re the consultant and you’re facilitating a senior team meeting on strategy—pushing the company leaders “to define two mutually exclusive options that could resolve the issue in question.” One option: the status quo which has served you well. But the other option—pretty compelling!

Suddenly, “the president of the company leaped out of his seat and sprinted from the room. When he returned, ten minutes later, his colleagues asked whether he was OK. He explained that the discussion had made him see how logically weak the status quo was. The reason he had raced out was to cancel a multimillion-dollar initiative in support of the status quo—the go/no-go deadline was that day.”

That’s from the contrarian chapter, “Strategy,” in the new book by Roger L. Martin, A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness. Actually, all 14 chapters are contrarian—and they just might also launch you out of your status quo chair!

I was already a big fan of Roger Martin’s thinking—now even more so! As Professor of Strategic Management, Emeritus, at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, he’s delivered consistent gems. My favorites:
• Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works (with P&G’s CEO, A.G. Lafley)
• "The Big Lie of Strategic Thinking" (Harvard Business Review)

So I was delighted to read his latest book (May 2022) featuring 14 contrarian insights (based on 14 of his 20 Harvard Business Review articles). I could write 14 reviews, but you’d miss the fun of your own discoveries. Martin summarizes: “Each of the fourteen self-contained chapters compares a dominant but flawed model to an alternative that I argue is superior.” My favorites:
• Chapter 1, Competition: “It happens at the front line, not at the head office.”
• Chapter 3, Customers: “The familiar solution usually trumps the perfect one.”
• Chapter 4, Strategy: “In strategy, what counts is what would have to be true—not what is true.”
• Chapter 9, Planning: “Recognize that it’s no substitute for strategy.”
• Chapter 10, Execution: “Accept that it’s the same thing as strategy.”

Wait…what? Martin gives readers and leaders permission to skip around his 14 chapters and read them in any order. (Who does that?) But warning—you’ll read them all. His wisdom on Culture, Innovation, Talent (“Feeling special is more important than compensation”), and more—all include leap-out-of-your-chair thinking!

Here are a few tantalizing morsels:
• NOT ARROGANT. After a succinct seven-page summary of the 14 chapters/models, Martin confesses that he is “not so arrogant to claim my alternative is the right model or the perfect model.” He adds, “But be assured that in due course your new model, too, will be found wanting and will be replaced by a better model still.”

• NOT STUPID. Martin writes that the 14 dominant models “are in place not because they are stupid. All of them make a lot of sense. So I don’t believe that these one-sentence descriptions of the alternative models will convince you to jettison the dominant model and adopt my alternative suggestion.” Citing his “hero Peter Drucker,” Martin’s simple goal is like Drucker’s: “to help executives increase their effectiveness.”

• MISGUIDED BY THE METAPHOR: Why the metaphor of the brain (top management) and the body (the organization) is all wrong. Must-read: how a bank teller ignored the training manual and discerned that “customers come in three general flavors.” (Brilliant!)

• PRICING. Why a product’s price at “$12.99 was really good, $15.99 not so good, [and] $18.99 great.” (Martin is a big fan of testing any new thinking, and using what he calls “the lazy person’s approach to choice.”)

• WASHING DAY RESEARCH. When A.G. Lafley was CEO of P&G, he “had a rule that whenever he visited another country, he needed the local P&G organization to set up an in-home visit with a local consumer and a store walk-through at a local retailer. His visit to the bank of a river in rural western China to speak to the village women who washed their clothes there became legendary. The message was clear: If the global CEO isn’t too busy to do in-home visits and store checks, how is it that you are?”

• YOUR MIND APPLAUDS YOU! In the fascinating chapter on “Customers,” (and so, so relevant to both nonprofit and for-profit organizations), the author’s contrarian views on customer loyalty may shock you. Using brain research, “Creatures of Habit” discusses “cumulative advantage.” Example: “If the mind develops a view over time that Tide gets clothes cleaner, and Tide is available and accessible on the store shelf or the web page, the easy, familiar thing to do is to buy Tide yet again.” When you do that he writes, “the mind applauds you.” LOL! (And by the way, before you do another expensive and unnecessary rebranding—read this chapter.)

Are you gutsy enough to consider a new way to think in your organization? Check out this 32-minute video interview with Roger Martin—with short summaries of four of his books, including A New Way to Think (starting at 20 minutes in). Martin was interviewed in May 2022 by Tiffani Bova, the Global Customer Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce. Click here. (Note: Both Martin and Bova are included in “The Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers for 2021.”)

To order from Amazon, click on the title for A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness, by Roger L. Martin. Listen on Libro.fm (7 hours, 58 minutes). And thanks to Harvard Business Review Press for sending a review copy.

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View the two-minute video, “Strange & Familiar: Architecture on Fogo Island [Official Trailer].” Read the two thinking books and meet us in Newfoundland next year!

*So…what’s with the THINKERS WEEKEND RETREAT during Berry Season at the Fogo Island Inn in Newfoundland, Canada? (Reminder: someone, other than me, needs to plan this!)

THINKING BOOK #2 OF 2: Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems, by Wendy K. Smith and Marianne W. Lewis

Breaking News! Leaders and managers must move from “Either/Or Thinking” to “Both/And Thinking”—and must be very comfortable with navigating paradoxes. Why? Authors Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis preach that “…either/or thinking can result in responses to dilemmas that are limited at best and detrimental at worst.” Now after two decades of studying paradoxes, these management profs (with in-the-trenches savvy) warn:

“Navigating paradoxes begin with the understanding that tensions are double-edged swords—they can drag us down a negative path or catapult us toward a more positive one.”

So…pick one: the negative path or the catapult! (Oh, wait. It’s not an either/or question—or is it?) In Chapter 1 of Both/And Thinking, the authors spotlight Zita Cobb who had a vision to re-energize the rural community of Fogo Island, Newfoundland—the island of her birth. Talk about a challenging paradox! A traditional saying in that province is “Onward through the fog.” (That’s going on my office wall!)

So how would you preserve the tradition, the beauty, the culture, and the economy of a small Eastern Canadian island (16 miles long by nine miles wide)—with just over 2,000 residents? (The challenge: keep things kinda the same, but thrive.) With help, Zita Cobb and her brothers dug deep into the paradox research—and launched a charity, Shorefast, and created a spectacular 29-room inn, Fogo Island Inn. (Did I mention it’s perfect for a THINKERS WEEKEND RETREAT? Click here.)

The Fogo Island story is just one of many colorful case studies and insights in this hot-off-the-press (Aug. 9, 2022) thinker’s book from Harvard Business Review Press. The authors also share their personal paradoxes. One word: transparent. Other must-read paradoxes:

THE LEGO WRECKING BALL. Pendulum swings—in response to lagging sales—prompted an unfortunate either/or overcorrection at LEGO. “In this case the pendulum becomes a wrecking ball; an overly powerful swing in the opposing direction creates a new and even greater challenge.” The book features challenges at Starbucks, IBM, and others, plus these insights from LEGO:

The slow and steady LEGO protocol…
   • “In response to a proposal from Lucasfilm, one vice present proclaimed, ‘Over my dead body will LEGO ever introduce Star Wars.’” (RIP! I recommend this LEGO Star Wars model with 1,062 pieces!) 

…was replaced by a “Creativity Above All Else” LEGO mandate…
   • “Whereas it once took nearly a decade for LEGO to introduce the green color, within a few years the toy maker started making parts in 157 colors.”

When a new strategy development champion arrived, he was shocked. “Despite early successes, few of the innovations were actually profitable.” Helpful: the “Polarity map: upsides and downsides of LEGO’s strategy” illustrates the classic matrix: Inspiring the builders of tomorrow vs. Organizational death; and Core business vs. Innovation (page 59).

MULES & TIGHTROPE WALKERS! The memorable metaphors ensure that the complexity and efficacy of paradox thinking is described with a measure of simplicity:

   • MULES. Complementing Roger Martin’s thinking in The Opposable Mind, the authors note that “mules are the offspring of female horses and male donkeys”—and write that leaders must look for “a synergistic option that integrates the opposing sides of a paradox.” They add that notable creatives (Einstein, Picasso, Mozart, and Woolf) had “aha moments” that often started “with noticing the opposing forces in their work.”

   • TIGHTROPE WALKERS. Picture tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s 1974 triumph between NYC’s Twin Towers. That’s the metaphor for the “microshifts between alternative options”—that enable organizations to move forward. This process involves “small either/or choices that constantly move us back and forth between alternative poles, creating a pattern in the big picture that accommodates both options over time.” 

Maybe you’d prefer a terra firma metaphor—like riding a bike. Warning! A true “balanced life” is never achieved.) Or consider Soren Kierkegaard’s description of the “tug-of-war between being expansive…and being constrictive.”

With that context, Smith and Lewis then serve up “Breeding Mules That Walk Tightropes” (that I’d pay to see!). Their quadrant on page 85 is (my opinion) the most helpful one-page summary of the book: “The paradox system: four sets of tools” for both/and thinking. I salute two academics who deliver a very memorable ABCD picture!
   • A: Shifting to both/and assumptions
   • B: Creating boundaries to contain tensions
   • C: Finding comfort in discomfort
   • D: Enabling dynamics that unleash tensions (a big idea: “Learning to unlearn”)

Gratefully, the authors allocate one chapter to each of the ABCD topics—and that’s where you’ll find the meat and potatoes (or just the potatoes, if you’re vegetarian).

CONFLICTING GOALS? With stunning documentation and resources, the appendix (pages 259-302) includes the “Paradox Mindset Inventory” with 16 questions on measuring tensions experienced and comfort with a paradox mindset. Example: “I often have competing demands that need to be addressed at the same time.”

How will your team members score this one? “I often have goals that contradict each other.” (Use these questions at your next staff meeting using the authors’ seven-point rating scale: “Strongly Agree” to Strongly Disagree.”)

There’s so much more—but let me conclude with this comment from Tom Peters of In Search of Excellence fame. “This book is, pure and simple, a masterpiece. And every word and semicolon is backed up by hard research. Don’t skim—dig in, take deep breaths, and reflect.” On tensions in Chapter 7, the authors quote Peters:

“Leaders have to guide the ship while simultaneously putting everything up for grabs, which is itself a fundamental paradox.”

Reminder: I need someone to plan the THINKERS WEEKEND RETREAT next year at the Fogo Island Inn. Bring your books!

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems, by Wendy K. Smith and Marianne W. Lewis. Listen on Libro.fm (9 hours, 46 minutes). And thanks to Harvard Business Review Press and Fortier PR for sending a review copy.

BONUS. Read the HBR article, “’Both/And’ Leadership: Don’t Worry So Much About Being Consistent,” by Wendy K. Smith, Marianne W. Lewis, and Michael L. Tushman (May 2016). Click here.  

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RISK—IN YOUR FIRST 10 YEARS! Are you coaching an early career woman—in her first 10 years in the workplace? Read this book together: Begin Boldly: How Women Can Reimagine Risk, Embrace Uncertainty & Launch a Brilliant Career, by Christie Hunter Arscott. Read John’s review on the Pails in Comparison blog. 

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Maybe…you don’t need a six-month rebranding marathon (per Roger Martin), but a rethinking exercise on customer habits? We can help! contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Leading with Heart: Five Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results

Issue No. 524 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a new WSJ bestseller on the five conversations for unlocking creativity, purpose, and results. It’s already a Top-10 pick for 2022! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”


Leading with Heart suggests a team exercise. Give nine Post-its to each person: "...ask everyone to write one important or quirky need they have from each category of need.” 

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How to Coach Perfectionists, People Pleasers, and Imposters!
What do CEOs fear? A study of 116 CEOs revealed that most executives have deep-seated fears. “While few executives talk about them, deep and private fears can spur defensive behaviors that undermine how they and their colleagues set and execute company strategy.”

That’s from The Wall Street Journal bestseller, Leading with Heart. The authors quote a Harvard Business Review article that documents how these fears often fuel dysfunctional behavior. (Read “What CEOs Are Afraid Of.”)

So how do your fears (and the fears of your CEO) impact your organization’s future? “What fears are holding you back?” is one of “Five Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results” in this powerful book by two very savvy executive coaches, John Baird and Edward Sullivan. Leading with Heart says “there are three typical fear archetypes that leaders fall into, one for each of the fear responses: fight, flight, and freeze. Each archetype has an unexpressed underlying fear, as well as a ‘tell,’ a way of behaving that we can see quite plainly from the outside.”

The authors spotlight three CEOs (changing their names, of course):
• Chris: THE PERFECTIONIST. She freezes and her “tell” is “chronic indecision and nitpicking.” For her, it’s the “fear of getting it wrong.”
• Andre: THE PEOPLE PLEASER. “Flight” is his fear response and his “tell” is “conflict avoidance and craving consensus.” For Andre, it’s the “fear of not belonging or being accepted.”
• Luis: THE IMPOSTER. He fights and his “tell” is “arrogance, anger, and irritability." Luis fears “being seen as incompetent.”

Yikes! Recognize anyone? These archetypes are not uncommon, but many executives are blind to their own blindness. “Of the five Leading with Heart conversations, this is often the hardest one to have and create change around.” But there’s good news: you can make fear your ally and the authors suggest some very practical steps.

This is an important book—phenomenal, really. The power of coaching oozes throughout the chapters. It reminded me of my early CEO years—and how coaching could have transformed my leadership. (See Chapters 12 to 15 in Mastering Mistaking-Making.)

Do you want results? Focus on these five conversations (five chapters):
1) What do you need to be at your best?
2) What fears are holding you back?
3) What desires drive you, and which might derail you?
4) What are your greatest gifts?
5) What is your purpose?

Page after page, you’ll find dozens of delightful surprises, helpful pokes-in-the-ribs, PowerPoint-worthy quotes, and amazing, amazing exercises! (The authors generously give the store away with dozens of exercises and group facilitation ideas. Stunning!) Plus, it’s jam-packed with probing questions in every chapter. You’ll appreciate:

#1. STAND UP FOR YOUR NEEDS EXERCISE. Give each team member nine Post-its (3 each of 3 colors) and “then ask everyone to write one important or quirky need they have from each category of need.” Example: physical needs (maybe use a yellow Post-it), emotional needs (peach), and environmental needs (lime). 

The facilitator posts them, by category, on a whiteboard or wall. Then the group sits in a circle, “and the facilitator goes through each of the needs in every category, saying, ‘Stand up if you need _______ to feel creative, productive, or safe.'” (What happens, the authors note, “…is that people start standing up for needs they didn’t even write down.” Read more on how this exercise helps foster a safe place for conversations.)

#2. “I HAVE A LEFT-HAND COMMENT.” How often are team members thinking, but not saying something in a meeting? The concept: “…the right-hand column contains all the things that are easy to say—all the ideas and comments that don’t rock the boat. The left-hand column is where potential conflict lives. It’s the pushback, the probing question, the nagging doubt that often goes unsaid.” When someone announces, “I have a left-hand comment,” everyone in the room “snaps to attention” because even though it is hard to say, it’s worth saying. Brilliant!

#3. “THE TEMPERATURE READING.” One way to develop a “fear-naming habit is to embed it into other exercises.” At the beginning of any meeting, just ask three simple questions: 
• “What or whom are you grateful for today?
• What are you worried or concerned about?
• What are your hopes and wishes for this meeting?”

#4. CEOs: THE ONE QUESTION. In the chapter, “What Are Your Greatest Gifts?” the authors name names with the permission of many well-known CEOs. (Reminder: they are premier executive coaches.) In a coaching session, Sullivan observed that Ariane Goldman, CEO of maternity fashion brand Hatch, “was spending all of her time putting out the flames of fears and tending to the organization’s low-level needs.” In a coaching session, he asked her, “What is one thing you alone can do at this company?”
   • Goldman: “Strategic and creative direction.”
   • Executive Coach: “And how are you spending your time?”
   • Goldman: (silence…)

“Ariane was spending 90 percent of her time on the ‘small stuff’ that zapped her energy. She wasn’t giving herself the space to feel creative.” She was also consumed by fears of failure. Yet, inspired by her executive coach, she was able to integrate the issues addressed in the “five conversations” and began leveraging her gifts. And this summary: “The more we get the flywheel of expressing our gifts spinning, the more our needs are met, and so on. It’s a system that builds upon itself.”

#5. ODE TO THE RELUCTANT LEADER. The authors comment on the engineer and/or the designer who builds something—and then becomes the reluctant CEO who “does not have enough desire for power and does not do a good job giving employees power, status, and recognition.” Good news: there is hope for those who “now find themselves leaders by circumstance, rather than by design.” (Read “Which Desires Drive You, and Which Might Derail You.”)

#6. OVERPLAYING YOUR GIFTS. Yikes! Is your CEO or any of your senior team members like “Aaron,” a force of a nature—a machine—yet a “diminisher” (a term coined by Liz Wiseman in Multipliers). “…diminishers tap into just 50 percent of their capabilities by micromanaging, telling people what to do, hoarding all the decision-making power, and generally underusing the brilliant people they painstakingly hire.” Why? “…they are often overplaying their gifts.”

It's only July, but Leading with Heart is already on my Top-10 list of books for 2022. If you’re a consultant (or a consultant wanna-be)—it’s a must-read. 

To order from Amazon, click on the title for Leading with Heart: Five Conversations That Unlock Creativity, Purpose, and Results, by John Baird  and Edward Sullivan. Listen on Libro.fm (8 hours, 8 minutes). And thanks to Fortier PR and the publisher for sending a review copy.


 
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Try this at your next staff meeting! When Edward Sullivan’s prof in the “Exercising Leadership” course at the Harvard Kennedy School quizzically sat down during an early class session, “apparently refusing to lead the class any longer,” chaos ensued as students wondered if the prof was orchestrating “Lord of the Flies meets Survivor.” It’s another must-read section in the chapter, “What Are Your Greatest Gifts?” On the last day of class, the prof circled back to that chaotic class session—and Sullivan experienced a profound insight about himself (see pages 173-177, “Claiming the Gifts Born from Our Pain.”) When is the last time you truly injected stunning creativity and deep learning into your weekly staff meeting? (Read this book!) 

2) Yikes! The authors warn, “Many companies that have amazing perks actually have horrible cultures. The posh benefits are often a weak attempt to make up for the fact that people no longer see their families, live in fear of their managers, or receive no encouragement or praise. It’s sad, but true.” (Read the final chapter, including the section, “Cultural Perks Are the Only Ones That Matter.”) Pop Quiz! List the “cultural perks” here in our organization.  

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The author of The Coaching Habit says the best coaching question in the world is the AWE question: “And What Else?”

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Why We Need Coaches: We are pitifully blind to our own behavioral tics!
Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—and What I Learned (The 10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson - Order from Amazon. 

Here are four books to remind you that, as Marshall Goldsmith notes, smart, successful people are pitifully blind to their own behavioral tics and “the higher you go, the more your problems are behavioral.”

[  ] What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Discover the 20 Workplace Habits You Need to Break, by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter (John’s 2013 Book-of-the-Year: read the review)

[  ] The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier (read John’s review)

[  ] Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—and What I Learned (The 10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson. See “Part 4: Every Leader Needs a Coach, Especially Leaders Who Endorse Coaching Books!” - Mistakes #12, #13, #14, and #15. (Download the table of contents and order the book here.)

[  ] Christian Coaching, Second Edition: Helping Others Turn Potential into Reality, by Gary R. Collins, Ph.D. (Order from Amazon) – Note: Gary Collins (1934-2021) opens his chapter on “Coaching Through Change” with LOL headlines: “Bill Clinton Appointed Head Coach of Miami Dolphins.” “Mother Teresa Named General Motors CEO.” And “Michael Jordan to Pastor Megachurch!” (No…you can’t be anything you want to be!)

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10 FATAL FLAWS! “Accepting mediocre performance in place of excellent results” is one of “10 Fatal Flaws That Consistently Lead to Failure in Leadership” in the helpful book, The New Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders (3rd Edition), by John Zenger and Joseph Folkman. Read John’s review on the Pails in Comparison blog.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Are some of your key marketing and communications team members “overplaying their gifts”—to the detriment and disappointment of other team members who don’t get to fully leverage their gifts? We can help! contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Strategy Quartet - Summer Shorts on Strategy

Issue No. 523 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights the lead, tenor, baritone, and bass parts of your strategy quartet—just in time to delegate to your harmonizing team members! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”


Here’s this month’s edition of your 2022 “Summer Shorts”—brief reviews of a quartet of strategy resources, including the new book, The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists.

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Summer Shorts!
Don’t look now (enjoy your vacation)—but in about 90 days, your Board of Directors is expecting Draft #1 of The Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan for 2023 and beyond. (Is anyone working on it?) Check the board meeting minutes, but I think there was a strong suggestion that they are expecting a new-and-improved plan—not a carbon copy of last year’s plan, and the previous year’s plan, and the…(well, you get the idea).

So if your current “strategic plan” is as outdated as my metaphors (“Carbon copy,” John? Really?)—here’s some help! For this “Summer Shorts” issue, I’m featuring A QUARTET OF STRATEGY RESOURCES. Forward this eNews to your strategic plan task force (including one board member)—and delegate your reading. Plan an off-site day with the task force in October and ask for book reviews and vacation videos.

POP QUIZ! 
What are the four singing parts in a barbershop quartet? (Answer: Lead, Tenor, Baritone, Bass.) What are four strategy resources you should read this summer? (Answer: See the “Strategy Quartet” below.)

LEAD:
[  ] #1. The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists, by Richard P. Rumelt. Click here to order from Amazon. Listen on Libro.fm (10 hours, 53 minutes). And thanks to Fortier PR and the publisher for sending a review copy.



Published in May 2022 with COVID-relevant insights, The Crux dares you to think differently about strategic planning, in fact—the author preaches—don’t even think about the worn-out, over-hyped strategic planning process—especially the “star” of the show, the rhetoric-rich actual document (LOL)! Instead, try this: “Don’t start with goals—start by understanding the challenge and finding its crux.”

The “lead singer/resource ” in this Strategy Quartet notes that Elon Musk built his SpaceX company by focusing on the crux—flying rockets back to earth and reusing them. “By 2018 the Falcon 9’s cost per pound into low-Earth orbit was twenty-three times cheaper than the old space shuttle.” To get to Mars, NASA had estimated a cost of $200 billion. Musk’s estimate: $9 billion.

Known as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers on strategy and management, Rumelt is professor emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. (You remember UCLA, right? They are the latest football program to join the Big 10. After all, they’re practically neighbors with those Cornhuskers. Wait…what?)

If I were on your team—I’d pick The Crux to read and report on. Hot-off-the-press. Fascinating. Practical. Witty. Humble. (Even some mountain climbing references—per the author’s personal experience.) Using real life consulting examples (names have been changed, of course), Rumelt also shares what he learned from clients and from Donald Rumsfeld in 2004, then U.S. Secretary of Defense. (Read my review of Rumsfeld’s  Rules.)
 
Rumsfeld believed leaders were neglecting a key element—the need for a coherent strategy. When Rumsfeld asked Rumelt if his academic colleagues had fixed that problem, Rumelt admitted they had not. The professor’s plan: “Basically, you put a small group of smart people in a room and see what they come up with.” (See Chapter 18, “Rumsfeld’s Question.”)

How did I miss this “giant in the field of strategy?” My favorite chapter, “The Challenge of Power,” is based on a talk the author gave to “the Sons and Daughters of Vikings” in Stockholm, Sweden. He’s also the author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy.

TENOR:
[  ] #2. What Is Strategy? An Illustrated Guide to Michael Porter, by Joan Magretta  and Emile Holmewood (Illustrator). Conceived by Heinrich Zimmermann. Click here to order from Amazon. (And thanks to Harvard Business Review Press for sending a review copy.)



When you sing tenor in a barbershop quartet, you’re expected to add interest and appropriate pizzazz. So how do you add vitality and that wow-factor to an already rock solid pillar in the strategy literature? Michael Porter’s classic article, “What Is Strategy?” first appeared in the November–December 1996 issue of Harvard Business Review. (See purchasing options under #3 below.)

So you probably already know which task force member will enjoy reading/viewing this very creative resource—what the prestigious Harvard Business Review Press titles, “An Illustrated Guide to Michael Porter.” Better buy two copies, because this eye-catching coffee table book will be “borrowed” by visitors to your reception area.

Similar to the recent publishing trend in business/parable/novel/story graphic format (with very appealing illustrations), What Is Strategy? announces on the first page, “This is not your father’s business book.” (LOL!) Instead, the author clarifies, “It’s aimed at readers in all types of organizations who learn visually as well as verbally. It’s aimed at time-starved readers who want to absorb important content fast. It’s aimed at readers who are serious about learning, but who also enjoy a good laugh.” 

In the business story, a fictitious management team—with the help and ideas of the real life Michael Porter, “grapple with the challenges of strategy—and their own egos.” The executive team includes a creative collection of animals (the CFO is a bull!) The panda (HR) tweets, “I wish @CEO would stop with the insensitive animal jokes. #hostileworkplace.”

If someone on your team enjoyed reading/viewing other business novels (graphic-type) such as The Goal and StrategyMan vs. the Anti-Strategy Squad, they will love this illustrated edition.
 
BARITONE:
[  ] #3. HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy (including What Is Strategy? by Michael E. Porter). Click here to order from Amazon.



The person who sings baritone in a barbershop quarter rarely stands out—and that’s a good thing. Ditto a good strategy. There’s alignment and coherency. Everything blends together. (Examples: Southwest Airlines and IKEA.)

Option #3.1 – Book. This resource features “10 Must Read” articles on strategy—pulled from back issues of the Harvard Business Review. “What Is Strategy?” is the anchor article.
Option #3.2 – Article. If you just want Porter’s 21-page article—and not the other nine must-reads on strategy, click here to order “What Is Strategy?” which first appeared in HBR in November/December 1996.
Option #3.3 – Article Review. Really? You don’t have time to read a 21-page article? (LOL!) Well then, would you have time to read my 900-word review of Porter’s article? Click here.

BASS:
[  ] #4. Talent, Strategy, Risk: How Investors and Boards Are Redefining TSR, by Bill McNabb, Ram Charan, and Dennis Carey. Click here to order from Amazon. Listen on Libro.fm (7 hours, 13 minutes). And thanks to Harvard Business Review Press for sending a review copy.



POP QUIZ! What should boards be talking about? One word: Talent. The authors of “TSR” write: “Of all the factors that go into the creation of long-term value, talent is the most important one for boards to be talking about.” That’s the first salvo of the triple focus on “TSR” in the 2021 book, Talent, Strategy, Risk.

The authors spotlight a corporate board that “…dedicates one board meeting a year to talent, focusing on CEO succession and development, and discussing in detail the performance of every senior officer of the company.” While I’m partial to books that deliver the goods by page 25, TSR is an over-achiever. The chart on page 19 (six pages early!) delivers eight “lessons of leaders who have made talent their priority.” About half of the book is focused on the board’s role with strategy and talent, including a chapter on “Redesigning the Board’s Committees.” (Don’t get me started! LOL!)

As my long-time readers know, I’m a big fan of the books and wisdom of Ram Charan—but this one almost slipped past me. (In February, I reviewed his most recent book, Talent.)

Without a lively bass singer, all barbershop quartets will fall flat (no pun intended). The bass anchors the group to the rhythm, the lyrics, and all the fun of quartet singing. (How do I know this? I sang bass in my high school’s barbershop quartet.) And when a board does not “own the strategy” (per chapter 5 in Ram Charan’s book, Owning Up), organizations will also fall flat.

So there you have it…four strategy resources (Lead, Tenor, Baritone, and Bass) for you to delegate to your strategic planning task force. And, of course, you’d be disappointed if I signed off without featuring a barbershop quartet chorus toe-tapper—with the post-COVID celebratory lyrics, “Zoom Meetings Are Over!” (Note: Enjoy this 11-minute video parody, “Together Again,” from the Music City Chorus and featured on the Barbershop Harmony Society website. You may not get all the competition’s in-jokes, but…LOL anyway.) View the video here.


 
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) See Figure 10 on page 129 of The Crux, “UN Sustainable Development Goals, 2015”—and you’ll need management therapy after you’ve read the 17 SDGs. Rumelt notes that “each goal points to a desirable outcome.” They are “admirable aspirations, but they are not coherent,” he notes. “Having seventeen inconsistent goals is the indulgence of politicians. A strategist would face such an exuberance of inconsistent ambition by selecting a consistent subset and pushing the rest aside, at least for a while.” But before we lambaste the United Nations for such idiocy, do we dare hold our own annual goals up to the light of day (or a cranky consultant)?  

2) Peter Drucker wrote that if you “have more than five goals, you have none.” Richard Rumelt suggests you lead with “the crux,” not goals. One of four major steps in strategic planning, suggested Donald Rumsfeld, is to “Identify Your Key Assumptions.” Are we using a coherent approach to strategy—or have we become victims of what Scott Vandeventer (see the Book Bucket) termed, “management-by-bestseller?”
 

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The Strategy Bucket affirms, “We know our mission statement by memory, and our programs, products and services are in alignment with the mission.” (aka…coherence!) Click here to view this hilarious parody video, “Mission Statement,” from “Weird Al” Yankovic. 

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POP QUIZ! The Strategy Bucket
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Strategy Bucket Core Competency: “We plan, believing the results are up to God. We energize our people and customers with a Big Holy Audacious Goal (BHAG). We’re systematic—never negligent—in our strategic planning. We know our mission statement by memory, and our programs, products and services are in alignment with the mission.”

At your next staff meeting, surprise your team with this POP QUIZ! “On the blank sheet of paper you have, write down our staff-reviewed and board-approved strategy.”  (If all you get are blank stares and blank sheets of paper, then ask for volunteers to read and review one strategy resource from above or below.)

MORE STRATEGY RESOURCES (visit the Strategy Bucket):
[  ] #5. Strategy/Mission Statement Mumbo Jumbo! Before you launch your strategic planning project, view this rhetoric-rich “Mission Statement” video (4.5 minutes) by "Weird Al" Yankovic, the prince of parodies. Click here.
[  ] #6. Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, by A.G. Lafley and Roger L. Martin (read John’s review)
[  ] #7. Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t – Mastering the Rockefeller Habits 2.0, by Verne Harnish (read John’s review)
[  ] #8. Breakthrough: Unleashing the Power of a Proven Plan, by Randon A. Samelson (read John’s review)
[  ] #9. Another Strategy Oops! The front page of the July 12 edition of The Wall Street Journal announced, “Gap CEO Sonia Syngal Is Stepping Down.” The reason? Old Navy, which is owned by Gap, is doing poorly. “Old Navy last summer introduced a range of sizes to make its clothing more inclusive but the effort backfired, leaving the chain with too many very small and very large sizes and not enough of the middle sizes, which are the most popular. In May, the company said it would scale back the strategy, after reporting disappointing earnings.” (Read the article here.)

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. 

BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022). And click here to read John's review of Steve's new book, The Discerning Life.

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TOUR de FRANCE for DUMMIES! The 2022 cycling marathon, Tour de France, July 1-24, is cleverly explained in the 2005 book, Tour de France for Dummies®. (Read my review here on the Pails in Comparison blog.)  

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Is your strategy coherent? According to The Crux, “At the simplest level, coherence means that actions and policies do not contradict each other.” Do you need an outsider’s look at your insides? We can help! contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General

Issue No. 522 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting urges you to read a “Master Class” in leadership by former Attorney General William Barr.And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”


Senator Everett Dirksen’s counsel to his son-in-law, Senator Howard Baker, after Baker gave a “windy maiden speech” in 1967: “Perhaps you should occasionally allow yourself the luxury of an unexpressed thought.” 

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Bill Barr on Malice or Stupidity!

We’ve all written our fair share of job descriptions over the years, right? So take out a blank piece of paper (you still use paper, right?)—and list the Top-10 roles and responsibilities for POTUS 47 (President of the United States, 2024-2028). 

Extra Credit: List the Top-20 responsibilities of the White House chief of staff. Spelling and neatness count.

Term Paper: List the Top-100 responsibilities of the Attorney General and—in 50,000 words or less—explain how the nation’s top law enforcement officer (though appointed by a Republican or Democratic president) can effectively call those legal balls and strikes and still keep his job!

Required Reading: Oh…before you pick up your pen, read the absolutely fascinating, hard-hitting, poignant, often concerning, yet very witty book by Bill Barr (I've retitled it), “The 2022 Master Class in Seriously Critical Issues as Seen Through a U.S. Department of Justice’s Top Decision-Maker.”

William P. Barr, now 72, served as the 85th Attorney General for the last two years of President Trump’s term. He also was the 77th Attorney General under President George H.W. Bush (1991-1993) and here’s a hint on your job description assignment: 

When Ed Levi, Dean of the University of Chicago Law School (and then president of the university), was asked to describe his stint as Attorney General under President Gerald Ford, he responded, “It’s just one damn thing after another.”

Did I mention that your required reading is One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, the New York Times instant bestseller by William P. Barr? It’s a robust 567 pages (plus notes). But honest—Barr’s honesty and insights were so memorable, I would have enjoyed another 500 pages. So…how does Barr view the President’s job description?

When COVID hit, Barr noted that “…the President’s desire to honor our federal structure and accommodate the states’ sovereign role was both sensible and, ultimately, unavoidable.” He adds, “But this collaborative approach required a statesman capable of herding cats—one with boundless patience and diplomatic skills, especially in an election year when his adversaries were at their worst in scoring cheap shots against him.”

DEMOCRATS will appreciate this book. Barr writes that the COVID crisis “…required a statesman with the ability to explain complex matters and regional variations to the public with precision and clarity. Trump was not that statesman. He was a disrupter—he liked to move forward by confusing and rattling his opponents. After March 2020, that was basically the opposite of what his job called for.” (What’s on your CEO’s job description?)

REPUBLICANS will appreciate this book. After about 300 page-turning “inside the Beltway” stunning moments (the Prologue explodes like a James Bond movie) and Oval Office policy debates (but often monologues), Barr then invests 200 pages for “Master Class” treatments of the gnarly issues facing our nation and world. With a conservative philosophical bent (yet an honest and balanced narrative), he offers real world solutions for:
   • Upholding Fairness, Even for Rascals
   • Bringing Justice to Violent Predators
   • Fighting the Drug Cartels
   • Securing Religious Liberty
   • Taking on Big Tech
   • Cops, Race, and the Big Lie
   • Protest and Mayhem

For a first-time author (I think he was way too busy with “one damn thing after another” to write a book earlier in his career), Barr’s writing is colorful, often elegant, and yet with a tell-it-like-it-is candor. Yes, he voluntarily served as Trump’s second Attorney General, and stayed through thick-and-thin for 23 months, but frequently pushed back. Yikes! What a tough job! (Where is that in the job description?)

WHY READ THIS BOOK—whatever your political leanings? You’ll appreciate how leaders lead through the minefield of politics, egos, and crises. (Imagine: you’re the “CEO” of a government department with more than 100,000 employees in 50 countries. Click here for the DOJ’s current organization chart!)

#1. MENTORING UP. How do you coach your boss or CEO to dial it back a bit? Maybe fewer press conferences during COVID? Fewer “gabfests.” Fewer tweets. Barr quotes Senator Everett Dirksen’s counsel to his son-in-law, Senator Howard Baker, after Baker gave a “windy maiden speech” in 1967: “Perhaps you should occasionally allow yourself the luxury of an unexpressed thought.” (Resource: Read the classic HBR article, “Managing Your Boss.”)

#2. TWO TYPES OF LEADERS. In the chapter, “Eating Grenades,” Barr colorfully details the constant never-ending challenges of leading the DOJ. (Impossible, actually.) He describes two kinds of cabinet secretaries, those “…who are run by their agency. They do little else but respond to their in-boxes and thus are almost entirely reactive, spending their time hopping to other people’s priorities and putting out fires.”

The other type: “Then there are executives who run the agency. This requires, in addition to responding to events, clearly identifying a core set of priorities, taking direct charge of them, and applying the energy necessary to overcome institutional inertia and bring them to fruition.” 

The grenade metaphor? When working with White House counsel Pat Cipollone, “We operated like a tag team, so that neither of us would provoke too much of the President’s ire at one time. We referred to this as choosing who would ‘eat the grenade.’”

#3. MALICE OR STUPIDITY? Commenting on Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 suicide while in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, Barr said that he personally reviewed the relevant video footage. He writes, “The fact that so many failures occurred at one time understandably led people to suspect the worst. But thorough investigations have shown once again the wisdom of Hanlon’s razor: don’t ascribe malice when stupidity is a sufficient explanation.” (Resource: More wisdom from Wikipedia!)

#4. RECRUITING GOOD PEOPLE. I’ve often wondered (usually ascribing malice) why cabinet secretaries and senior White House staff continued to serve Presidents whose policies and/or character they could no longer support. Barr quotes Bob Gates (who served both Bush 43 and Obama). “‘Look, somebody has got to do these jobs,’ he said, ‘and what is best for the country is that we get good people who know what the hell they are doing.’” (By the way—as you might expect from the Trump White House—there are the occasional “strong” words used in this “damn” book!)  

#5. CHIEF OF STAFF/LION TAMER. Barr notes that Trump’s fourth chief of staff, Mark Meadows, would sometimes take the heat for helping Barr and Cipollone protect the DOJ from “the President’s frequent bad ideas or his impulsive mistakes.” So what’s the job description of the chief of staff? “Before the election, Mark’s job was like a high-wire act; after Trump’s defeat, he was like a lion tamer without a whip and chair.” (Resource: read Rumsfeld’s Rules and his description of the job as “javelin catcher!”)
 
#6. MEMORABLE METAPHORS. My opinion: outstanding leaders have a steady supply of metaphors and well-crafted labels for describing challenging and complex issues. Barr is a master at this. When arguing with the Treasury Department that ATF (not a revenue source) belonged in the DOJ, Barr told Treasury Secretary Nick Brady (during Bush 41’s term), “Things that go Clink belong to you; things that go Bang should belong to me.” (Hilarious!) Other memorable metaphors and wordcrafting:
   • “Hissy Fit” (Really…someone emoted inappropriately in our government?)
   • Space Cowboys (the Clint Eastwood movie about geriatric astronauts): a moniker the younger DOJ staff assigned to Barr and two of his senior team members!
   • Bamboozled: “Yet the FTC, bamboozled by economic mumbo jumbo, approved the acquisition.” (See the “Taking on Big Tech” chapter—brilliantly written.)
   • Alligators: “Getting [Trump] to accept good advice was like wrestling an alligator.” And when asked how he felt beginning his first term as the AG, Barr commented, “Like I’m about to run across a river on the backs of alligators.” 
   • Skunk Works: Barr assembled a "skunk works" of key players to create “a specific plan of action to step up the fight against the Mexican cartels.” (See more about skunk works in the book, In Search of Excellence.)

There’s much, much more—including Barr’s appreciation for Trump’s important policy decisions during his term. But he also quotes Salena Zito’s article in the Atlantic describing how people responded when Trump made outrageous claims. She wrote, “the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”

This is Barr’s first book. I would definitely read another damn book by Barr! (Visit here to read his speeches.)

To order from Amazon, click on title for One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, by William P. Barr. Listen on Libro.fm (22 hours, 1 minute). 


 
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Bill Barr writes about the death penalty: “Opponents cannot dispute that the proportionate penalty for murder is death. But they argue that it is somehow inconsistent to take a life in the name of upholding the value of life. This is a sound-bite argument lacking intellectual coherence.” (He builds his case in the chapter, “Bringing Justice to Violent Predators.”) Who on our team is gutsy enough to push back on, perhaps, our simplistic “sound-bite arguments” that we’ve grown accustomed to using in defense of our mission?
2) Barr had a good working relationship with FBI Director Christopher Wray. (Yet Trump wanted to fire Wray for a variety of reasons Barr thought inappropriate.) “I thought [Wray's] low-key, businesslike style—he called himself a ‘workhorse, not a show horse’—was refreshing after Comey’s insufferable exhibitionism.” Discerning leaders know when to hire and when to fire (some say “hire slower, fire faster”). Are our job descriptions, SMART goals, and expectations clear in our organization—so there is clarity on character and performance standards?
 

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POTUS Leadership Lessons 
Looking for several leadership books to read on the beach or in the mountains this summer? (Or if you’re a Southern Hemisphere reader, please jump in also!)

[  ] The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity, by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy (read John’s review)

[  ] The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, by Chris Whipple (read John’s two reviews)

[  ] Rumsfeld’s Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War, and Life, by Donald Rumsfeld (read John’s review)

[  ] Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump, by Tevi Troy (read John’s review and pop quiz!)

[  ] How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions, by Susan Eisenhower (read John’s review)

[  ] Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis—Suez and the Brink of War, by David A. Nichols (read John’s review)

For more leadership and management insights, read Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon. 

BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022). And click here to read John's review of Steve's new book, The Discerning Life.

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EVANGELICAL EXODUS! A theologian/trend spotter writes, “Baptists are learning to love Mary” in the fascinating book, Evangelical Exodus: Evangelical Seminarians and Their Paths to Rome, by Douglas M. Beaumont (Editor). Click here to read John’s review on the Pails in Comparison blog. 

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Does your chief marketing officer feel like a “lion tamer without a whip and chair?” Is it just one crazy thing after another—with no coherence in your marketing and communication strategies? We can help! contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Next Sunday: An Honest Dialogue About the Future of the Church

Issue No. 521 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting recommends a gutsy new book, by Nancy Beach and Samantha Beach Kiley, on the future of the local church. Must-read! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”


 Nancy Beach (a boomer) and Samantha Beach Kiley (a millennial) have a gutsy and honest dialogue about the future of the church. (Next Sunday is must-read!)

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A Gutsy Dialogue on the Future of the Church

Gutsy! That’s my one-word description for the mother/daughter (boomer/millennial) conversation in the new book, Next Sunday: An Honest Dialogue About the Future of the Church, by Nancy Beach and Samantha Beach Kiley. Published last week in the InterVarsity Press Praxis series (“equipping leaders for ministry”), I’m guessing the authors’ thoughtful views will generate cheers and jeers. But good for them—these two gutsy women!

The authors bring significant street cred (“church cred?”) to the table. Nancy Beach served as the programming director at Willow Creek Community Church and is now on the teaching team at Soul City Church in Chicago. She’s also a leadership coach with the Slingshot Group and is a frequent conference speaker. Samantha Beach Kiley is the creative arts pastor at Austin New Church and is a “writer and performer at the intersection of art and faith.” Her writing is superb. I read her poem, “The Little Red Chair” (pages 33-36), to our grandchildren at our Father’s Day gathering last Sunday.

They wrestle with seven distinctives that the church should address. Each chapter includes Nancy’s perspectives, followed by Samantha’s insights. (If you’re a boomer with nailed-down convictions about most everything, it might be dangerous to read this millennial’s informed affirmations about the church. Yikes.) But you’ll appreciate their humility:

“Together we asked, What will be most important for local churches going forward if they hope to thrive and not merely survive? Others will no doubt point out distinctives that are not on the list (prayer!), and we offer our perspective as humble learners who care deeply about the church and, like so many others, are just trying to figure it out.”

They add, “We do not come at these questions with an audacious sense of confidence or think we possess the answers or the magic ticket for churches to reach their full potential for the next generation.” They describe themselves not as historians or academics, but “storytellers” and suggest that “this book is for every person who wants to believe that church still matters, even though so many of us have been disappointed, even wounded along the way.” (See Chapter 5, “When Harry Works With Sally.”)

Why read this dialogue about the future of the church?

#1. Boot Camp for the Church's Future. You’ll be hard-pressed to find another book, published in 2022 by a fairly conservative Christian publisher, that aggressively (yet humbly) takes on big and thorny issues. It’s a boot camp immersion experience for new recruits and burned-out vets. The seven distinctives: Creating Genuine Community, Being Kidcentric (must-read!), Having an External Focus, Concerning the Hour on Sunday, Men and Women Leading Well Together, The Church’s History of Exclusion and Oppression, and Creating a Healthy Culture. (For more on flourishing cultures, read this review.)

#2. External Focus: Yes or No? A church founded in 1980 (“with a very long name”—LOL!) honestly answered a penetrating question: “If our church suddenly disappeared, would anyone in the surrounding society even notice?” Their response: no. (So…yes…Chapter 3 is also must-read.)

#3. Doing Good…Without Sacrifice. Reflecting on the commitment levels required of seven-days-a-week Jesus followers, Samantha confesses, “I would like to do good and feel good. I would like to do good on my schedule. I would like to do good without sacrifice. I would like to look good while doing good. I would like to change someone’s life in one hour or twenty-five dollars a month. I would like it if afterward someone could show me what I fixed. I would like to imagine myself a fixer.”

#4. Easter: Hamburgers for the Homeless. Samantha and her husband landed at a church in Austin, Texas, because “…we saw on social media that instead of an Easter service, they grilled hamburgers for the homeless. This sounded like a church community that my justice-driven husband might feel at home in and that my megachurch-high-production-value self might need to recover in. (I thought you did twelve services on Easter, not zero!)"

#5. COVID Recovery. Nancy looks in the rear view mirror in the chapter, “Concerning the Hour on Sunday,” and reflects on Willow Creek’s seven-step strategy and suggests a wider range of strategies for this decade. She wonders how the church will authentically articulate the case for in-person worship on Sunday (and why in-person is a mandate) when online streaming during COVID (sweatpants with coffee) became so “…comfortable and easy, playing into the worst of our consumer tendences.” 

#6. Managing Pendulum Swings. Nancy suggests, “While I have no crystal ball to forecast the future, I do believe that the gathering as we know it will die if it’s only about the delivery of content. Now that all of us can listen to a message from any pastor around the world on our little screens or even worship with a team of our choosing even if they are far, far away, why would we be motivated to physically show up at a specific time and place if only to hear a message and maybe sing a few songs? I don’t believe content will drive anyone to make the effort.” 

The book provides solutions and offers a very thoughtful discussion on five tensions churches must address (“pendulum swings”), noting, “We often look at values or strategies as all-or-nothing rather than as tensions to be delicately managed." The tensions include: 1) attractional versus missional, 2) performance versus participation, 3) authenticity versus excellence, 4) unpredictable versus template, and 5) topical teaching versus biblical exegesis. (Did I mention: must-read chapter?)

NOTE: One of my bucket list projects is to wait until I’m about 85 (at that age, who cares what critics post on Facebook?) and then write a book titled, “If You’ve Only Got One Hour a Week to Give to God, Come and Hear Me Preach.” Thanks to Nancy and Samantha, I don’t need to write that book. Just read Next Sunday.

#7. “More Sales-y Than Soul-sized.” The writing and the practical ideas are memorable:
• How to leverage the question, “So what?”
• Samantha’s five core principles for next Sunday (she tags herself, “a recovering daughter of the megachurch movement”)
• The language of metaphor—and a parade of suitcases that punctuated a “forgiveness” theme one Sunday morning.
• Note to Christian camping leaders—you’re mentioned frequently. (Must-read!)
• Samantha: “And I think churches have overestimated the extent to which my generation would prefer to engage online, creating snack-sized content and a social media presence that feels more sales-y than soul-sized.”

When I read Chapters 5 and 6, “When Harry Works With Sally: Men and Women Leading Well Together” and “The Mess We’ve Made: The Church’s History of Exclusion and Oppression,” I was saddened once again. As Nancy writes about visiting a liturgical church, “We spoke beautiful prayers and were led in a time of confession. My only complaint was that the time of silence to confess our sins was way too brief for my list!” 

Oh, my. These two gutsy women want you to take a big gulp and reconsider why Christ died and rose again. They want you to remember what Jesus said to Peter in Matthew 16, “You are Peter, a rock. This is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out.”
 
To order from Amazon, click on title for Next Sunday: An Honest Dialogue About the Future of the Church, by Nancy Beach and Samantha Beach Kiley. Listen on Libro.fm (5 hours, 19 minutes). And thanks to the publisher for sending a review copy.

YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) In A Diary of Private of Prayer, by John Baillie, the morning prayer for the 22nd day of the month reads in part, “Lord Jesus Christ, who bid Your disciples to shine as lights in a dark world, in shame and contrition of heart do I acknowledge before You the many faults and weaknesses of which we are guilty who in this generation represent Your Church before the world; and especially do I acknowledge my own part in the same.” So how can you and we, the church, “shine as lights in a dark world?”
2) Listen to the hymn, “I Run to Christ,” and then share a line from the lyrics that touched your soul. 

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The Results Bucket reminds you to abandon dead horses and sacred cows and focus on outside results.

Buckets Countdown:
The Results Bucket (#1) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Results Bucket Core Competency: “We focus on results. We are not activity-driven, we are results-driven. We measure what we value, so we celebrate both the writing and the achieving of team-blessed standards of performance for every staff member, board member, and volunteer. We also abandon dead horses and sacred cows.”

“Having an external focus” is one of seven distinctives in Next Sunday. Peter Drucker described this distinction as “outside results versus inside results.” Visit the Results Bucket and download Worksheet #1.1, "Where Are Your Priorities?" on the "Five Signs You Might Be More Focused on Inside Results Than on Outside Results" (Figure 1.1 from Chapter 1).

Bonus LOL! “Arrange to visit other churches to see how they ride dead horses,” is just one of 21 hilarious ways that teams often deal with “dead horses.” Visit the Results Bucket and download Worksheet #1.2, "When the Horse Is Dead, Dismount."

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. 

BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022). And click here to read John's review of Steve's new book, The Discerning Life.

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EVANGELICAL EXODUS! A theologian/trend spotter writes, “Baptists are learning to love Mary” in the fascinating book, Evangelical Exodus: Evangelical Seminarians and Their Paths to Rome, by Douglas M. Beaumont (Editor). Click here to read John’s review on the Pails in Comparison blog. 

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Is your organization plagued with dead horses and sacred cows? Is it time for an experienced outsider’s view to help you regain your external focus and prioritize your attention on outside results? We can help! contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Diplomatic Gifts: A History in Fifty Presents

Issue No. 520 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features an amazing book on gift-giving. Caution! Re-gifting might backfire! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”

 
“Dear Abby: More ambassadors are visiting next week. What gifts would be appropriate?”

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Dear Abby:

Dear Abby...Our country will be hosting some rather important guests from abroad. When our king visited their king last year, we miscalculated and presented several expensive, but inappropriate gifts. (We were embarrassed!) Meanwhile, their king showered us with stunning gifts—including an elephant! (Did I mention we were really embarrassed?) Any ideas for this year’s visit and gift exchange? Thank you,

The 5th Ambassador in 5 Years!

POP QUIZ! If you were “Dear Abby,” How would you answer this anxious ambassador’s cry for help?

[   ] OPTION #1. Read Diplomatic Gifts: A History in Fifty Presents, by Paul Brummell.

[  ] OPTION #2. Recommend that the ambassador resign immediately!

[  ] OPTION #3. Suggest the ambassador read Chapter 10 in Diplomatic Gifts about the gift exchanges in the 14th century between two sultans. “…the latter was so incensed that he ordered the waterboarding of the unfortunate Timurid envoy.” (And then suggest the ambassador resign immediately!)

How often have you been perplexed over what gift to give a friend, a business colleague, a host or hostess—or if you’re a king, prime minister, president, or an ambassador—what’s the perfect gift for each unique person/country/culture?

Fortunately, you don’t need to wait for “Dear Abby’s” answer. Ambassador Paul Brummell has written a masterpiece on gift-giving. And he admits, it’s a perilous path sometimes. The waterboarding incident? The damage was done because “a gift of a robe of honour to a Mamluk sultan” was taken as an insult.

The author’s capacity for research is remarkable (incredible and memorable detail)—but the short chapters (just four to six pages each) ensure that each profiled gift, with an economy of words, is still wondrously described. Brummell’s wordcrafting is a delight. His British wit (often subtle) is present in every chapter, and frequently elicits satisfying chuckles. Example:

“Our next story concerns another pachyderm gifted in the year 1514, in this case not an elephant but a rhinoceros. It was to be gifted, regifted and then regifted again, although (spoiler alert) tragically dying in the course of its transportation to the final intended recipient. Its stuffed carcass then served as a less impressive replacement diplomatic gift.”

Who is this impressive author/researcher? Paul Brummell is a British career diplomat and currently the UK ambassador to Latvia. He’s served previously as ambassador to Romania, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Brummel was also the UK’s high commissioner to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean. He also writes travel guides. (Imagine his frequent flier mileage!)

Who Should Read This Book?

• Corporate Gift-Givers. Caution! Chapter 9 highlights the expensive and rare silks given by higher-ups of the Byzantine Empire to popes and other rulers over several centuries. The author documents the gift of an embroidered silk in 1261 (specifically a silk now known as “The Pallium of St. Lawrence”). Fascinating. Yet…fast-forward a few years and we learn that not every silk was treasured by all. “…the Mongol ruler Nogai Khan was decidedly unimpressed by gifted silks, complaining that they had no practical value and offered no protection from the elements.”

• Nonprofit Gift-Givers. My nonprofit CEO and fundraising friends will glean new insights about the subtle levels of gifting—and what happens when Gift Recipient A learns that Gift Recipient B received a more favored gift. (Time to rethink the recognition levels and donor gifts for your next capital campaign—before your major donor invites you to a waterboarding reception!)

• Re-Gifters! OK, admit it—sometimes you “regift” a gift, hoping the original giver won’t find out! In Chapter 6, the author reveals the genesis of “white elephant” gifts—in this case, actual white elephants. “Exotic animals were gifts guaranteed to impress,” he writes. And “the impracticality of the gift of a wild beast ensured its exclusivity and added to its prestige.” 

Brummell adds, “There are many examples of the regifting by monarchs of exotic animals received as presents, perhaps after the initial wonderment generated by the creature had started to pale, and the expense had started to bite.” (Ask Charlemagne about the cost of feeding and housing an elephant!)

• History Buffs. Oh, my. If you enjoy BBC World News, but maybe feel a tad guilty for skipping much of your World History required reading in high school or college, then Diplomatic Gifts will be your redemption. Brummell serves up 50 fascinating and short chapters that sweep history from c. 4 BCE (“Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, a Gift from the Wise Men from the East to Jesus Christ”) to more recent gifts:
   --1973 - How a gift of diamonds from an African president in 1973 scuttled a politician's run for president of France in 1981
   --2004 - Cuban cigars
   --2007 - a stadium!
   --2008 - a pair of R.M. Williams Boots

There’s much more. Don’t skip the conclusion (it will be on the test!). Enjoy this: “We started our journey with the story of the baby camel gifted to the French President Francois Hollande, a diplomatic gift whose fate was to be treated over-casually. It was a gift not intended to be consumed, but which was eaten by its custodians. We will end with a gift that reverses this tale: a diplomatic gift that was intended to be consumed, but was not. It was instead treated with far more reverence than was intended by the giver, becoming the object of veneration.” (See the section, “Chairman Mao’s mangoes.” LOL!)

Father’s Day is Sunday, June 19. Diplomatic Gifts is the perfect gift for your father, your mother, your grandparents, or the voracious lifelong learners in your family or organization. Enjoy!

To order from Amazon, click on title for Diplomatic Gifts: A History in Fifty Presents, by Paul Brummell.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Yikes! In 1948, according to Paul Brummell, a local radio station telephoned the British Ambassador to Washington and asked what he would like for Christmas. Sir Oliver Franks, “a man of frugal tastes, thought long and hard before replying.” That Christmas Eve, the radio station’s special holiday broadcast listed the gift requests from several ambassadors stationed in D.C. “The French ambassador had asked for world peace. The Soviet ambassador had requested freedom for those enslaved by imperialism. The British ambassador had asked for a small box of crystallised fruit.” So…what would you like for Christmas? (Careful!)

2) Diplomatic Gifts describes a 1571 faux pas. “Mehmed’s delegation left after a fortnight, and he was given a parting gift of 8,000 gold coins by Istvan, a present that reportedly reduced him to tears, though not in a good way. He had been expecting more.” Describe a gift you gave or received that brought you to tears! Share some insights from Diplomatic Gifts or read my review of Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands: The Bestselling Guide to Doing Business in More than 60 Countries. 

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The Customer Bucket reminds nonprofit fundraisers to listen to and understand the four types of givers. Not all givers are alike!

Buckets Countdown:
The Customer Bucket (#2) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Customer Bucket Core Competency: “We know our primary and supporting customers. We segment our customers to more effectively meet their unique needs. We listen to our customers. We are zealots for researching and understanding our markets.”

Nonprofit leaders who are serious about listening to and understanding their customers will also hyper-focus on the art and science of giving and gifting. According to R. Mark Dillon, in his helpful book, Giving & Getting in the Kingdom: A Field Guide, there are four broad segments of givers:

   • THE GIFTED GIVER (2-5% of givers) will show up at the dedication of a new building and ask, “What’s next?” Dillon says “the gifted giver seldom needs to be asked.”
   • THE THOUGHTFUL GIVER (15-25% of givers) tends to calibrate giving to current income “and rarely involves lowering their net worth to fund what they care about.” 
   • THE CASUAL GIVER (35-50% of givers) “possesses a vague understanding of their obligation to be faithful and generous stewards of their resources, but rarely seek out opportunities to give. They usually give in response to a specific request.”
   • THE RELUCTANT GIVER (perhaps 33% of givers) may be “an overly generous description, because many in this category give very little of their resources for any charitable purpose.” Easy to offend, they’ve had few, if any generosity mentors in their lives. Their parents were unlikely to be kingdom stewards either.

Check out the books and resources in the Customer Bucket and the Donor Bucket. Do your newest staff members have a biblical theology of fundraising? Who is coaching them?

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. 

BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022). And click here to read John's review of Steve's new book, The Discerning Life.

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SYNERGY! The The Synergy Solution: How Companies Win the Mergers and Acquisitions Game.
Read just one line in this new book on mergers and acquisitions—and you’re hooked: “In most organizations, PMI is not a core skill.” PMI (post-merger integration) torpedoes many, many mergers. (Read the review at John's new blog, Pails in Comparison.)

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Breaking News! When you incentivize donors with gift premiums, here’s a reminder: All Donors Are Not Alike! They fall into four buckets: Task-Oriented (Info-Sponges and Just-the-Facts) and Relationship-Oriented (Heartfelts and Share-Meisters). Each type might not appreciate the same vanilla-tasting gift. Learn more in our book, ReBrand: Workbook + Coloring Sheets For Ministry Branding. For more help, contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy

Issue No. 519 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting recommends a can’t-put-it-down, nonfiction, page-turner from two investigative reporters. The subtitle: “A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy.” And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”

Read Dead in the Water. It’s a page-turning mix of Captain Phillips meets Midsomer Murders meets The Wall Street Journal meets Lloyds of London meets Tom Clancy!

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Lloyds of London Just Called! Yikes!

Quick! Add Dead in the Water to your summer reading list. (Or, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere—Quick! Add Dead in the Water to your winter reading list!)

Two investigative journalists make bold promises in the subtitle of Dead in the Water: “A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy.” Hype or not?
   • True. (Check!) But it reads like a Tom Clancy novel.
   • Story. (Check!) So fast-moving, I couldn’t put it down.
   • Hijacking. (Check!) Remember Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips?  
   • Murder. (Check!) Sadly, you’ll have to read this page-turner.
   • Global. (Check!) Cyprus, London, Yemen, Manila, and more.
   • Maritime. (Check!) Plan A: Transport $100 million of oil from Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula to China—and avoid Somali pirates.
   • Conspiracy. (Check!) Lloyd’s of London called. They’re on the hook for a serious insurance payout. What really happened on the Brillante Virtuoso—and who really owns this oil tanker and the oil?

There’s no spoiler alert here, but Dead in the Water delivers as promised. Imagine navigating a ship—almost three football fields long—and staying clear of 11,000 other tankers chugging through the sea-lanes—outrunning those vicious pirates. Did I mention the maritime traffic also includes 5,300 container ships worldwide? 

Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel, both award-winning business reporters for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine (and more) have serious credentials—and even more serious guts. This book is “the product of more than four years of reporting, drawing on tens of thousands of pages of court filings, witness testimonies, police records, military documents, emails, memos, and audio transcripts, as well as interviews with more than seventy-five people…” They add, “No scenes or dialogue have been invented or embellished…”

“More than once during our research, we were warned of risks to our safety if we continued to investigate,” they write. Whew! Did I mention guts? They caution readers about the “lawless seas” and weave our imaginations into this dangerous world where “the most audacious crimes can occur”—where “there are certainly no police, and often no consequences.” 

Why does it exist? Maritime crimes are “enabled by the complexities of twenty-first century finance and, perhaps most of all, the collective indifference of a global population that wants what it wants, wants it now, and doesn’t want to know the human cost.” (You may need a gut check also.)

You will love this book—and on your reading journey, you’ll be intrigued with the intricacies of Lloyds of London (I had no idea!); you’ll learn who shows up when a distressed ship sends up the flares and why; and you’ll follow two ex-detectives from London’s Metropolitan Police as they try to unravel this complicated mess of a crime.

If Hollywood stays true to the true story and makes Dead in the Water into a movie, I’ll see it twice!

To order from Amazon, click on title for Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy, by Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel. Listen on Libro.fm (9 hours, 22 minutes). And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy. 



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) What’s the value of reading nonfiction books that transport you outside your own culture and country—and into the abundant global leadership and management messes? (Example: click here to read my review of Collision Course: Carlos Ghosn and the Culture Wars That Upended an Auto Empire, by Hans Greimel and William Sposato.)

2) Recommend a book your colleagues should read that is based outside of our country. Why should they read it? (Need suggestions? Here are two below.)
   • Money Games: The Inside Story of How American Dealmakers Saved Korea's Most Iconic Bank, by Weijian Shan (read my review)
   • The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un, by Anna Fifield (read my review)

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What’s your coaching style? Word salads? Or five-word insights or questions—then silence? Watch the poignant scene in Top Gun Maverick and then re-read The Advice Trap. (Convicting!)

Top Gun Maverick:
Five Words. Then Generous Silence.

Stunning! That’s my one-word review of Top Gun Maverick, the long-awaited “Top Gun 2” that picks up from the original 1986 movie. I was captivated by this 2022 box office record-breaker on an IMAX screen (PG-13). And no surprise—numerous leadership and management moments popped out.

For fun, watch the Top Gun Maverick trailer:


Leadership Moment: Admiral Kazansky (Val Kilmer) shares five powerful words with “Maverick” (Tom Cruise) in the action-packed 2022 movie, Top Gun Maverick.  View trailer.

My favorite scene: “Maverick” (Tom Cruise) visits his ailing friend, Admiral Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer). “Iceman” has lost his voice (sadly, also true in real life) and must type his comments onto a computer screen. His responses are few and brief. (Try that in your coaching!)

A big issue is holding Maverick back. Yet Iceman’s thoughtful response doesn’t require an essay or five jargon-filled paragraphs. Just five words:

“It’s time to let go.”

Then silence. No more typing. No meandering word salad. Just this poignant, wisdom-filled one liner: “It’s time to let go.” The IMAX moment of silence is powerful. (Try that in your coaching!)

The scene reminded me of the powerful page, “Generous silence,” in The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier (my 2020 book-of-the-year). He notes, “Generous silence can allow the delicate insights of a conversation to blossom and bloom.” (Read more wisdom on pages 181-182.)

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GOD LOVES YOUR WORK! What if…God isn’t calling you to address poverty in Haiti, or dig wells in Africa? What if God is just asking you to love your nine-to-five work—and affirm your holy calling to your day job? Read my short review of God Loves Your Work: Discover Why He Sends You to Do What You Do, by Larry Peabody. Visit the new blog, Pails in Comparison.)

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. The Coaching Habit recommends you “Cut the Intro and Ask the Question” in the same style that James Bond action-packed movies begin with “Pow!”—within the first 10 seconds of the movie. The author urges coaches to, “Cut the preliminary flim-flam. You don’t need a runway to pick up speed—you can just take off.” Whether you need help in your coaching or in creating action-packed, attention-getting media, we can help. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Zero to IPO: Over $1 Trillion of Actionable Advice from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs

Issue No. 518 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a book jammed with management and leadership insights—such as why the grand prize for winning the entrepreneurial pie-eating contest is (wait for it…) more pie! Plus listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast (bottom left) for Steve Macchia's interview with John. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”

“Some people say leading a fast-growing startup is like winning a pie-eating contest: the grand prize is that you get to eat even more pie.”

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A Mandatory Must-Read!

I love this book—but I almost didn’t read it. What could I, a nonprofit guy, learn from this new Wall Street Journal bestseller, Zero to IPO? On the other hand, I do enjoy watching and learning from those Shark Tank episodes. Maybe this book is similar—plus helpful and entertaining like the TV shows.

But…who would actually believe the hype in Frederic Kerrest’s subtitle? The author promises “Over $1 Trillion of Actionable Advice from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs.”

Wow. Was I wrong! The entrepreneurial advice and counsel is stunning! You’ll be hard-pressed to find a page—any page—in this extraordinary book that doesn’t deliver practical, practical leadership and management insights. While the author, cofounder and COO of Okta, takes us on his journey from startup to IPO (the book’s framework), it is much, much more than that. Zero to IPO could just as easily have been titled:
   • The Only Unforgiveable Sin in Business
   • Your CEO’s 20 Most Important Meetings Each Year
   • The Grand Prize of the Pie-Eating Contest
   • Crashing and Burning (4 Crashing Chronicles)
   • Why You Need a Stupidly Expensive Espresso Machine

I swiped those titles from the snippets in this fun-to-read book that delivers powerful management axioms (yet with humility) and so, so strategic counsel on building your organization or company. The author—clearly—is a lifelong learner and he generously shares his platform with dozens of entrepreneurs who have helped him and his companies along the way. I listed 40 favorite insights in my notes—but I have room for just 10. Enjoy!

#1. CHECKLIST FOR FOUNDERS: Broken Glass! While all founders are unique, the author lists 15 qualities that founders need, including “Resilience.” He quotes Sean Parker, Napster founder and early Facebook president who “famously said running a startup is like chewing broken glass—to succeed, you need to fall in love with the taste of your own blood.”

“You’re going to get punched in the mouth every day,” writes Kerrest. “Are you the kind of person who’ll just keep getting up? Or will it eventually flatten you?”

#2. PIE-EATING CONTEST! Founders report that life never, ever slows down—especially after the IPO. The author remembers one trip to Europe: “Over eight days, I went to five countries and somehow passed through London’s Heathrow Airport eight times. I remember thinking, Well isn’t this glamorous.”

Growth is pressure-packed. “Some people say leading a fast-growing startup is like winning a pie-eating contest: the grand prize is that you get to eat even more pie.”

#3. FIGHTING FIVE FIRES! Kerrest cautions team members at startups that “You’ll never stop racing.” (Yet…his insights on family life are helpful and memorable.) He notes, “Don’t let the jovial demeanor of the founders you see on stage at conferences deceive you. They might look calm and relaxed, but offstage, five different fires are raging.” (Solution: read how the most effective leaders prioritize and stay focused on the critical few—not the growing dozens of issues.)

#4. A STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE ESPRESSO MACHINE! The author devotes two pages to “You’re Flush, Now What?” After your company or organization is funded, what are your most strategic purchases? He lists five essentials including “A really good, full-time, in-house recruiter. Your company is only as good as the people you have in it. A top in-house recruiter…will repay their cost many times over.” 

What else? “A stupidly expensive espresso machine—seriously. No more productivity lost on staff trips to the local coffee shop. Plus, break areas often spark conversations, which lead to closer relationships and breakthrough ideas.”

#5. FIRING BEST PRACTICES. “…firing somebody is really hard to do. We’re human.” In one wisdom-packed page, the author delivers six best practices, including: “Always fire on a Monday and never on a Friday.” (Read why.)

#6. NO “HEAD OF…” TITLES. In startups, warns Kerrest, the tendency is to award prestigious, but unmerited, titles to early hires like “Head of Marketing,” or “Head of Sales.” DON’T! Later, when you bring in a more senior person—with years and years of relevant experience—you’ll be forced to have an uncomfortable conversation with your “Head of…” who will no longer be the “head of…”

#7. FOUR FUNDRAISING DOCS. By the way, almost every two-page spread of this creatively-designed book delivers succinct action steps on fascinating niche topics. Example: The two pages on the four fundraising pieces of collateral you’ll need for approaching investors (or in the nonprofit world—donor prospects) are memorable. They include: 1) The Elevator Pitch, 2) The Executive Summary, 3) The Business Model, and 4) The Pitch Deck. (Helpful Hints for the elevator pitch: “Be specific. Avoid jargon. Say it so an eighth grader could understand.” Note: I use Microsoft’s tools to measure readability. This eNews weighs in at an eighth grade level.)

#8. DEATH BY POWERPOINT! In your “Pitch Deck,” limit your presentation to just 12 slides. “No one will sit through a 30-slide deck” and “learn to tell your story without your deck.” This reminded me of Suneel Gupta’s storytelling insights on startups in Backable: The Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take a Chance on You. (Read my review.)

#9. THE ONLY UNFORGIVEABLE SIN. “As a founder,” the author admonishes, “…you have one job above all. One job that, if you fail at it, nothing else matters. And that job is: don’t run out of money.” Interestingly, that’s the exact counsel that Bob Buford (1939-2018) gave Dan Bolin many years ago, when Buford was a board member at Pine Cove Christian Camps. (Read this true story in the Budget Bucket chapter of Mastering the Management Buckets.)

#10. “GET USED TO GIVING STUFF UP: Especially, and most painfully, the stuff you like.” As I mentioned above, while this is a book tracking the pathway to an IPO, it’s really much more—and you’ll urge your colleagues to read this book. Example: “Early on, develop the ability to anticipate when some part of your work is going to get so big that you’ll need to peel it off and give it to someone else. Start the hunt for your replacement six to nine months ahead of that handoff.”

I gotta stop at these 10 favorite best practices—but you’ll be rewarded tenfold when you read and apply the street-smart principles. The 13 crisp chapters cover the journey from “Should You Be an Entrepreneur?” to Ideas, Teams, Fundraising, Sales, Culture, Leadership, Growth, Crashing and Burning, Managing Yourself, and Boards—plus a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the IPO process and what comes next. Dozens of helpful book titles are recommended and the quotable quotes are a feast, including:
   • We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ MBAs (Yet)
   • You’re going to be buried under a tsunami of tough decisions…
   • Thinking of going it alone? Think again.
   • Prioritization 101: The Eisenhower Decision Matrix
   • Be stingy with your calendar—very stingy.
   • [Contrarian counsel!]: Ditch Your 1:1s
 
Don’t make another mistake by skipping this book. It’s another must-read. If you’re too busy to read this—then it’s a mandatory must-read!

To order from Amazon, click on title for Zero to IPO: Over $1 Trillion of Actionable Advice from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs, by Frederic Kerrest. Listen on Libro.fm (8 hours, 3 minutes). And thanks to Fortier PR and the publisher for sending me a review copy.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) In Frederic Kerrest’s enlightening two pages on “How to Push Past the No: A little chutzpah goes a long way,” he shares the true story of the startup team that asked for a meeting at an investor’s office. After hearing the pitch, the investors said “No!” and exited their conference room. “Let’s just sit here,” suggested the startup CEO! Then after multiple inquiries from the potential investors, “Are you guys going to leave?”—they, amazingly, were able to reengage with the investors—and got a deal! (LOL!) QUESTION: When should you NOT take “no” for an answer?

2) Zero to IPO suggests you “Max Out on Mini Teams: To get big, you might have to start small.” One company noted grows by constantly building small teams. Each mini-company “contains no more than the number of people who could fit in a van or a bus.” (Note: Amazon uses a “two-pizza” standard for cross-functional teams. See my review of The Amazon Management System. QUESTION: What is our business model for growth? Are our teams right-sized? 

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The Drucker Bucket affirms “We don’t just give lip service to management—we are disciplined students of great leadership and management thinkers like Peter Drucker, Ken Blanchard and others.”

Buckets Countdown:
The Drucker Bucket (#4) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Drucker Bucket Core Competency: “We are privileged to be leaders and managers and we steward that privilege by being lifelong learners and practitioners in the art of management. We don’t just give lip service to management—we are disciplined students of great leadership and management thinkers like Peter Drucker, Ken Blanchard and others.”

Zero to IPO features a very strong focus on the customer, much like Peter Drucker’s five most important questions, including: Who is our customer? and What does our customer value? And speaking of quotable quotes, click here to enjoy a few “Druckerisms” including these:
   • “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him [or her] and sells itself.”
   • “People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.”

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. For more, visit the Drucker Bucket.

BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022). And click here to read John's review of Steve's new book, The Discerning Life.

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SYNERGY! The The Synergy Solution: How Companies Win the Mergers and Acquisitions Game.
Read just one line in this new book on mergers and acquisitions—and you’re hooked: “In most organizations, PMI is not a core skill.” PMI (post-merger integration) torpedoes many, many mergers. (Read the review at John's new blog, Pails in Comparison.)

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. The author of Zero to IPO quotes a founder: “Only 1 percent of interesting things have been invented yet. Ninety-nine percent have not.” If you agree—call us and we’ll work on the 99 percent with you! Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life

Issue No. 517 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting trumpets a Laugh-Out-Loud book that promises humor can be a secret weapon in business and life—even for you! Plus listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast (see below) for Steve Macchia's interview with John. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”


The “Global Humor Cliff” is featured in the LOL book, Humor, Seriously. For a taste, view “How to Make a Sense of Humor Your Superpower” in this “five lessons in five minutes” video from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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The 4 Styles of Humor: What’s Your Style? 

In their 2021 serious—but very humorous—book, Humor, Seriously, a Stanford Graduate School of Business prof and a business strategist/stand-up comedian describe how a business and board consultant puts his funny to work.

Using humor—instead of put-downs—to address organizational and boardroom dysfunction, this senior management consultant always packs a copy of the “CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a set of guidelines devised by U.S. government officials to sabotage terrorist organizations from the inside.” 

That 50-page quick-read resource for your leadership toolbox is noted in the wonderful book by Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas, subtitled, “Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how anyone can harness it. Even you.)”

The authors laugh along with their readers: “Originally developed by the OSS during World War II, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual is a guide for, as the CIA puts it, ‘teaching people how to do their jobs badly.’” They add:

“Here’s a sample of some of the tactics our nation’s best intelligence officers recommend you use to undermine the operations and efficiency of a terrorist cell—or a typical American board meeting.”
• When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
• Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.
• Haggle over the precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
• Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
• Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

I’ve been in those board and staff meetings! LOL! But the sabotage resource is just one of dozens and dozens of creative ways to inject humor into our boring and lackluster workplaces (and Zoom calls!). The authors explain how the best leaders and managers use humor at work—and no surprise—the book has hilarious moments. But you’ll also discover that humor is very serious business. Start with the research.

Really—there’s research on humor? Of course—if you’re a Stanford prof, you survey more than 700 people to ask, “What’s holding you back from using humor at work?” Four myths popped out of the clown car (I mean...the research car):

MYTH #1: The Serious Business Myth. The authors bust this myth with research and insightful quotes—even from President Eisenhower (1953-1961), “the second-least naturally funny president after Franklin Pierce” (1853-1857). Bottom line: employees love humor.

MYTH #2: The Failure Myth. This erroneous belief often plagues team members who “express a deep, paralyzing fear that their humor will fail.” Aaker and Bagdonas come to the rescue again with a helpful four-quadrant chart (aka Boston Consulting Group Matrix)—positioning “appropriateness” on the vertical axis versus “laughter” on the horizontal axis. (See page 28, just three pages beyond my “Page 25” standard for charts that summarize great books.)

MYTH #3: The Being Funny Myth. Good news! You don’t have to be funny all the time—just look for “a moment of delight that leads to a smile, or an ‘aha’ rather than a ‘haha’ (or, if you work for a supervillain, a ‘mwahaha’).” And get this—Gallup has documented the “Humor Cliff,” when humor rises and falls. The authors note that “we tend to smile and laugh much more on the weekends than on weekdays.” They add, “So you’ve been practicing.” (That’s funny!) And more good news: my age group on the Gallup chart, “Humor Cliff, Weekend Edition,” documents that we laugh more on weekends than those stuffy 40- to 60-year-old people! But…then it's downhill until you’re in your 80s and 90s. Those folks, apparently, have more to chuckle about!

MYTH #4. The Born With It Myth. Even comedians “need both talent and training to succeed.” More good news—with training and exercise, you can learn how to use humor in your life and your workplace. Humor is a skill “…we can strengthen through training and use, much as we would strengthen our leg muscles by working out at the gym…and walking to and from the fridge during videoconferences when our ‘camera isn’t working.’” (See the “No One Is Born Funny” chart on page 31. It involves puppies!)

WHAT’S YOUR HUMOR STYLE? Of course, this business strategist/professor writing duo offer a “Humor Styles Questionnaire.” I completed the online assessment and received a three-page report (in color!). The book explains the four humor styles and begins with this: “First, like any good lumberjack, let’s understand our axes.” (Funny!) 

Have you ever segmented your humorous friends and family members into four groups? (Not me!) The four styles:
• The Stand-up (Aggressive-Expressive)
• The Sweetheart (Affiliative-Subtle)
• The Magnet (Affiliative-Expressive)
• The Sniper (Aggressive-Subtle)

Sniper? Yes! “Snipers are edgy, sarcastic, and nuanced, unafraid to cross lines in pursuit of a laugh. They describe their humor as an 'acquired taste’—one that not everyone will acquire—with a delivery that tends to be dry and under their breath.”

Me? They tag me as a Magnet—but you’ll need to read the book to see why I enjoy injecting humor into my book reviews, my meetings, and my wardrobe (says my wife!). So…put on your own clown clothes and take the free HUMOR TYPOLOGY QUIZ. You’ll receive your own “Custom Humor Typology Report” and you’ll be on your way to injecting appropriate humor into your workplace. (I’m serious! Take the quiz!)


What’s your Humor Style? Stand-up, Sweetheart, Magnet, or Sniper? Click here to take the Humor Typology Quiz featured in the seriously funny book, Humor, Seriously.

YOU WILL THINK DIFFERENTLY ABOUT HUMOR. There’s way too much in this book to mention here—but for the record—I made 45 notes in the front blank pages of my book. Very funny/serious stuff! You (yes, you!) and even your boss can learn how to leverage the power of humor in business (and life), based on the popular class at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Here’s a taste from the book:

• LOL. The late night TV writers for Seth Myers deliver 100 jokes each day. Myers thins it down to just 12 of the best. (I’d like to read the left-overs!)
• LOL. Read about the prank that the White House senior advisors pulled on President George W. Bush (2001-2009) during a policy meeting. (Everyone wore tan socks.)
• LOL. Chapter 2, “Your Brain on Humor,” highlights a student-written underground newspaper at West Point that emerged after 9/11. (The purpose: “lift the collective spirits” of the cadets.) This chapter reminded me of the brain science in Brain Rules for Work (read my review).
• LOL. In “The Anatomy of Funny” chapter, they note the classic humor technique of exaggeration—with Sarah Cooper’s “Airline Seating Chart” on page 83. Hilarious! Cooper reveals the real truth about your airline experience: First Class, Economy Comfort, Economy Discomfort, Economy Agony…and worse!

MORE LAUGHS COMING...
• LOL. When Deloitte consultants “like so many of us, had stopped speaking like humans,” the team developed software that called out the objectionable jargon—“holding a contest to see who could provide the most egregious ‘bullwords.’” (They list the top bullwords, like “bleeding edge,” “robust,” and "synergize”!) The winner won a trip to bullfighting school. For real! This reminded me of the classic mission statement video by "Weird Al" Yankovic.
• LOL.The authors highlight a company that “created a wall of ‘quotes of the week,’ where they would document the funniest moments and phrases, encouraging all employees to be on the lookout for moments of humor and joy throughout the workday.”
• LOL. Another company created enormous signs highlighting their core values. One sign to spotlight “AGILITY” was misspelled and read “AGLITITY.” (The fun-loving team reports that the typo is still on the sign and prompts chuckles every day!)
• LOL. In the chapter, “Creating a Culture of Levity,” read why one company has a budget line item for chicken-themed socks!” (Hilarious!)
• LOL. Don’t skip the laugh-out-loud footnotes like this one on page 124 referencing your pet frog: “If you got this deep-reach callback [a humor technique] to the negotiations study in chapter 2, we are proud of you.” 

3 OPTIONS! Want to cannoball deeper into the humor pool? Here are three options. Oops! Four options! (See what I did there?)
[  ] #1. Read Humor, Seriously.
[  ] #2. Listen to Humor, Seriously.
[  ] #3. View “Class Takeaways: Humor Is Serious Business” from Stanford Graduate School of Business. The video: “Five lessons in five minutes — learn how to make a sense of humor your superpower.”
[  ] #4. Take the free HUMOR TYPOLOGY QUIZ. 

To order from Amazon, click on title for Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life (And how anyone can harness it. Even you.), by Jennifer Aaker  and Naomi Bagdonas. Listen on Libro.fm (6 hours, 5 minutes). And thanks to Sydney Romanov for generously gifting this book to me and giving me many laughs (and insights). Note: The authors sometimes use what Trey Gowdy calls “non-church words”—so buyer beware!



Also, to order the 50-page declassified CIA resource from Amazon, click on title for Simple Sabotage Field Manual , by United States Office of Strategic Services. (Per above, consider bringing this book to every dysfunctional board meeting! LOL!)



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Try a “Bad Idea Brainstorm” session with your team! Humor, Seriously suggests that “instead of just assuring your team that ‘there are no bad ideas,’ explicitly ask for the silliest, craziest, worst possible ideas they can think of—the ones they think have no chance of working.” Read the chapter, “Putting Your Funny to Work” and try this at your shop. DISCUSS: After taking the Humor Typology Quiz, discuss how the four humor styles might approach the “Bad Idea Brainstorm” session!

2) One of my many books of quotations includes this keeper, “Humor is God’s aspirin” (author unknown). Humor, Seriously notes that writing jokes can be a counter-intuitive way to create new ideas. In 2017, a global retailer asked a “pitch” company to write jokes on how brick and mortar stores should compete against e-commerce. One standout: “Amazon never lets you keep the hanger.” The authors noted, “But underlying each of these jokes was real insight.” ASSIGNMENT: Write some jokes your church could use to inspire members and attenders to exit online church and return to their favorite pew! (You might unearth some deeper insights with a few LOLs!) 

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The Book Bucket affirms that “leaders are readers” (and listeners). How about a pie-in-the-face award for managers who have read the LEAST number of books in the past 90 days?

Buckets Countdown:
The Book Bucket (#5) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Book Bucket Core Competency: “We believe leaders are readers! We create a culture that embraces a healthy appetite for leadership and management books, journals, articles and audio resources. We mentor team members with thoughtfully selected titles and chapters to help them leverage their strengths, grow in their faith and serve others with passion. We don’t just talk about books—we actually read them!” 

LOL from the Book Bucket! We’ve chuckled over a few LOL books over the years, including these favorites that were featured in Issue No. 480 (click here):
• A Comedian’s Prayer Book, by Frank Skinner (order from Amazon)
• Laughter Therapy: Good Medicine to Make Your Heart Glad, by Jonny Hawkins and Bob Phillips (order from Amazon)
• Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward, by Paul Johnson (order from Amazon)

LOL! SIGN ON A PASTOR'S DESK:
“Don’t feel totally, personally, irrevocably responsible for everything;
that’s my job—God.”
(From Quotes for the Journey, compiled by Gordon S. Jackson)

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. For more, visit the Book Bucket.

BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022). And click here to read John's review of Steve's new book, The Discerning Life.

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THRIVE! “The Resiliency Diagnostic” in Arrive and Thrive is worth the price of the book. See the 20 statements on the “Effective Crisis Leadership Competency.” That’s just one of many helpful resources in this brilliant book by three women authors, subtitled, “7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership.” (Read the review at my value-added, jargon-filled, synergistic blog, Pails in Comparison.)

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Know how to use appropriate humor in your marketing and communication pieces? Call us to learn why humor is a “secret weapon” in your storytelling. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Crazy Ambulance Tales

Issue No. 516 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a fun book by Emmy award winning writer, Chris Treece. Love those EMTs! Plus listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast (bottom left) for Steve Macchia's interview with John. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of my latest “PICs.”

What’s an ECNALUBMA? Crazy Ambulance Tales is a page-turner! Fun to read, well-written, plus there’s wit and wisdom in every colorful chapter! 

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Here Comes the ECNALUBMA!

“John, when are you going to read a book just for fun?” That was Joanne’s pointed question—and when your wife speaks, you should listen, right?

So “just for fun,” I read the new book, Crazy Ambulance Tales, by Chris Treece. This Emmy award winning writer reminisces about his college years in Vermont—learning and serving as an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) on the fire and rescue squad of St. Michael’s College. From first-year “probate” to the crew chief’s seat on the ambulance runs—following the author’s tales (both hilarious and poignant) was absolutely fun and the title is perfect—CRAZY! 

But, I need to push back a bit on my wife’s assumptions. I do read lots of fun books. To date, this is Issue No. 516 with another book review (but who’s counting?). My reviews tilt toward leadership and management books (business and nonprofits) and faith-based books. I’m a lifelong learner—and, at least for me, reading and reviewing books is FUN! 

So, you’ll understand (even if my wife doesn’t) that I can find leadership and management insights (and deep spiritual content) in almost any book. To be clear—Crazy Ambulance Tales was exceptionally fun to read, but the leadership learnings popped out frequently. (Sorry, Joanne. I can’t help myself!)

LEADERSHIP/MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS: FUN!

SNOOPY! As part of the first-year training to be a certified EMT, the leadership softens the rigorous work by assigning nicknames to the probates. Chris Treece majored in journalism and so “Snoopy” (the Peanuts comics character—often on his doghouse roof with a typewriter) became the author’s new moniker. Fun! (How does your team balance critical training with light-hearted moments?)

ECNALUBMA. Huh? Yeah—"ECNALUBMA” was the in-house name for their rig. Get it? It’s AMBULANCE spelled backwards—per the large letters on the front of ambulances so it’s visible in your rear view windows—especially in emergencies. Fun! (What does your organization’s name read when spelled backwards?) 

SAVED A CHICKEN’S LIFE! When interviewing to become an EMT, the panel asked Chris Treece, “Have you ever saved a life?” He thought through his Boy Scout years and came up empty, but then offered this: “Well…I saved a chicken.” (The panel almost convulsed in laughter!)

Treece added, “I got to be known in my neighborhood as a guy who was really good with bandages and iodine, mostly due to self-inflicted injuries via bicycles, go-karts and dog bites.” So a neighbor asked him to examine her chicken that had been attacked by a dog. He administered first aid on the left wing joint. A panelist asked, “And what was your level of success with the patient?”

“She lived,” Treece proudly said. “Still producing about two eggs at day, I’ve been told.” (More laughter by the interviewers!) Fun!

LEAD! Early on, his mentor (the crew chief) told Treece to take the crew chief command on a routine transport of a patient from a smaller hospital to a large medical center. Treece confesses the awkwardness of telling his chief what to do. He still remembers the valuable debrief: “You’re the chief. You’ve got to lead. Nothing is worse than a crew chief who won’t lead, and in fact you’ll never become the chief if you can’t lead.”

A.B.C. Reading this book, I thought back to the First Aid class in my college days (and the final exam in a live triage setting!) and many years of summer camp staff training with counselors and lifeguards. So I appreciated this refresher on the helpful memory devices employed by the St. Michael’s crew.
   • A.B.C. – “What is most important in the patient’s care? Their A.B.C.: airway, breathing, and circulation.”
   • O.P.Q.R.S.T.U. – “What are the questions for a patient exam? Onset, provokes, quality, region, severity, times, undoes.”
   • And this: “What is your first job on the scene? To make sure it’s safe. A dead rescuer saves nobody.”

Plus, sometimes the author would wander into an EMT night class “…greet everyone cheerfully, then promptly flail about and keel over on the floor.” Every student remembered the instructor’s immediate response.

So…with that introduction and context—you'll dive deep into Crazy Ambulance Tales—and you won’t stop talking about this book. The chapter titles are way too tempting!
   • The Double Forking
   • God Smiles on Drunks and Babies
   • The Patient Is Hiding in the Closet
   • A Bit Too Much Creamed Corn with Lunch
   • No Public Displays of Affection (PDA), Please!
   • Transporting Buddha and John Lennon
   • 25 Below at 5 a.m.

Whew! You’re right there in the ambulance (I mean the ECNALUBMA) on those 2 a.m. calls to horrific traffic accidents, fires, and dangerous encounters. My appreciation for first responders just skyrocketed. Oh, my. I’m so, so grateful that women and men are called to serve on the front lines. This book also reminded me of the courageous officers profiled in L.A. Cop, by Bob Vernon.

Somehow, though, the author’s masterful storytelling blends unbelievable danger with (almost) a stand-up comedy narrative tucked cleverly into those pages when you wonder out loud—“How do they deal with these challenges, day after day, and often at night and working holidays?” Not fun! But…the author’s humor is refreshing—which is what we should expect from an ECNALUBMA crew chief named Snoopy! Fun!

CENSORED! Treece wrote a weekly column, “Fire & Rescue Blotter” for the college newspaper—detailing the crew’s “more colorful calls.” He admits the blotter was rather dull, so he tried to spice it up. “Monday, May 26, the rescue unit responded to a nearby home where a heavily bearded individual in a ruffled pink dress lay unconscious on the kitchen floor due to a diabetic coma.” While true, the editors and squad superiors wouldn’t accept his more colorful accounts! Fun!

RECRUITMENT SAVVY. The author was named “Membership Chairman” (the title “sounded like a frumpy, elderly woman in a gigantic, flowered straw hat”) so he changed the title to “Recruitment Officer” (without getting permission!).

His unique approach in recruiting other students to consider joining the rescue squad is textbook savvy. Like a Peter Drucker disciple, he analyzed his potential customers and zeroed in on them. “So we had to find these rare birds on campus, probably by looking at their scars, vehicles, or colorful hobbies, and share heart-pounding and bonding experiences with them, in between their signing up for the ECA class and trying out for the squad.” Each crew member took the ECA (Emergency Care Attendant) class—a semester course required to work on the ambulance.

Note: My camp and conference colleagues, members of CCCA, will find stunning parallels to their current challenges of recruiting college students for summer camp positions. Must-read!

MEMORABLE WRITING. You’d expect an Emmy award winning writer to turn a phrase or two—but every chapter surprises with eye-catching and soul-catching one liners. 
   • The elderly man—cheerful—but in need of help. Treece writes, “..he had an expression on his face, like he was seeing a beautiful place we could not. Like his spiritual luggage was packed and ready to go—right now.”
   • The elderly patient when asked why she called for help, “I’m not sure what’s wrong. Maybe I just had a bit too much creamed corn with lunch.”
   • The five myths of ambulances, sirens, and inattentive vehicles on the road. Treece colorfully describes The Guy in the Knit Hat, “driving an ancient coupe”—bopping along with earphones and a Walkman (illegal, by the way). Myth #4: “Everyone who hears a siren pulls to the right. Ha ha! Oh boy! I love this one. No.” The author’s perfect label for The Guy: “Oh boy. Future customer.”
   • The chapter describing the love and care that EMTs often provide and how it is sometimes reciprocated—“Even EMTs need a little love.” 
   •  And the lonely 80s-something woman who would call in on those dark Vermont winter evenings—and the crew would arrive, cheerfully, and just hold her hand. Treece notes, “What you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me.”
   • Treece’s “theology of the ambulance”—important and insightful.
   • Why the author needed “an upper room”—and why you need one also.

DEEP CAMARADERIE. Poignant! Up until now, you’d find the best example of teamwork in the bestseller, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown (read my review). However, I have a new winner! Read Chapter 25, “The Warm Hood of the Rig.” You’ll yearn for a team that embodies what Chris Treece reminisces about.

“I miss the camaraderie. That sounds cliché, but I mean deep camaraderie, the kind that is based on seeing the absolute worst that life has to offer and facing it together as a team.” He adds, “I miss being part of an organization of people who loved me, supported me and knew me better than anyone else on the planet—even my parents, who could never really bring themselves to ask me for details of what I did on the rig.”

The author also notes what he does not miss about those long nights, sleep deprivation, and more.

Who should read this book?
   • My Christian camp and conference center colleagues and rescue mission team members. (Must-read!)
   • Team leaders and train-the-trainers
   • Thoughtful leaders and readers (you’ll have a new appreciation for first responders)
   • Anyone who wants to be better prepared for emergencies (first aid, Heimlich maneuver, and more). Note: Treece was trained by, and worked alongside, Michael O'Keefe, the co-author of Emergency Care (the classic EMT textbook).

To be clear—this really was a FUN book to read—but the insights and wisdom were a special bonus. This is a spectacular book. I bought three copies of Crazy Ambulance Tales to give to first responders, including my local fire department team in San Clemente. They recently aided my neighbor who had fallen, sadly, on his 89th birthday. I was so impressed with our EMTs—and so grateful.

To order from Amazon, click on title for Crazy Ambulance Tales, by Chris Treece.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Here’s a great exercise for your team. Chris Treece chronicles two areas: What he learned going in to this opportunity—and what he learned going out (four years later). He writes, “I went on the rig believing in God. I came off the rig believing in God and the power of goodness, but also the power of evil.” (This reminded me of Daniel Henninger’s recent WSJ column when he writes, “Putin’s war is forcing a re-evaluation of evil in the world and our response to it.”) What did you learn in an earlier position—going in and going out?

2) Oh, my. Chapter 24, “Maple Farm Road,” describes—some years later—Treece bringing his wife back to Vermont and to the tragic scenes he experienced on Maple Farm Road—events which still plagued the author. At that sad location, his wife, Helen, took his hand and prayed—for the families who lost loved ones and for her husband, Chris—that the dark spirits and nightmares would vanish. And this is stunning: “…they never came back.” Have you had a spiritual encounter that took your breath away? 

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The Program Bucket standard: “We research and understand our customer before launching new programs.”

Buckets Countdown:
The Program Bucket (#6) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Program Bucket Core Competency: “We are zealots for program effectiveness and so we research and understand our customer before launching new programs, products or services. We measure program results. We feed our primary programs and drop the losers—all in the spirit of discerning where God is at work.” 

Top 10 Questions to Ask About Program Capacity and Sustainability. Download this worksheet (PDF) from the Program Bucket and identify the three most important questions for your organization. (Suggestion: Read Luke 14:28-30 in The Message.)
 
The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. For more, visit the Program Bucket here. 

BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022). And click here to read John's review of Steve's new book, The Discerning Life.

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SELF-COACHING! “First and foremost,” write David Novak and Jason Goldsmith, “good managers are good coaches.” Click here to read my review of Take Charge of You: How Self-Coaching Can Transform Your Life and Career. Visit my new blog, Pails in Comparison, for more book reviews

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Knock! Knock! The media is here! Is your team prepared for PR emergencies? Have you conducted Crisis Bucket practice drills so you know what to say—and who can and cannot say it? We can help you practice. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

The Gift of Disillusionment: Enduring Hope for Leaders After Idealism Fades

Issue No. 515 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting spotlights a new book from Peter Greer and Chris Horst on what leaders do after idealism fades. Stunning stories, plus listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of my latest “PICs.”

“Trite Jeremiah 29:11 memes assuring us our hardships are NBD (“no big deal”) because God has a plan aren’t helpful,” write Peter Greer and Chris Horst. “’It will all work out’ is not just untrue: It is hurtful.”

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Bring Your Bible and a Wet Towel
(for the Tear Gas!)

NO WORDS. Really—no words. I don’t have an adequate vocabulary to persuade you to read The Gift of Disillusionment. But I’ll try.

First…there’s the title. The GIFT of disillusionment? No thanks! Then the sub-title, “Enduring Hope for Leaders After Idealism Fades.” Of course—you’ll agree—idealism is always inadequate, so do we really need this book? But then why am I so drawn to the stories? So captivated by the big idea—and the practical (not preachy) way that the Old Testament words of Jeremiah are fleshed out in this book?

Maybe…because trustworthy authors Peter Greer and Chris Horst have never disappointed. (Must-read: Rooting for Rivals.) Maybe…because the authors have diagnosed the current dilemma—there’s an epidemic of discouraged and disillusioned leaders. Burnout. Pain. Heartache. Quitting time!

So just in time, these two transparent leaders share their own vulnerabilities and stunning stories as they introduce us to more than a dozen heroes—in-the-trenches people who are beautifully positioned around the globe to meet needs. Their narratives (you guessed it) feature idealism, disillusionment, but finally—enduring hope. 

The authors “sought leaders with a minimum of twenty years of service in their fields and interviewed those who demonstrated staying power, sticking around long enough to experience the thorniest and knottiest difficulties.” They add, “We intentionally  sought leaders who had wounds and setbacks that could have forced them to give up—but who pressed on anyway.” 

Are you discouraged—or know someone who’s burned out? Read this book and learn from these pioneers who lead organizations and demonstrate what Eugene Peterson terms “long obedience in the same direction.”

Greer and Horst issue this invitation to readers and leaders: “We want to be, as the book of Jeremiah puts it, ‘serene and calm through droughts, bearing fresh fruit in every season.’” With “The Weeping Prophet” (aka “The Persevering Prophet”) guiding and interpreting, these in-the-trenches stories of women and men ministering in oh-so-challenging settings…well, no words. Simply stunning! Memorable page-turners!

Noting Jeremiah’s prophetic challenge, the authors write: “Their leaders failed them. The city walls no longer protected them. Their security, safety, and certainty evaporated. Their hope ran very thin. Many gave up on God.”

OK. This is real life. I can relate. No Pollyanna here! They add, “And no amount of positive thinking or inspirational Christian wall art promising a hope and a future would change their circumstances. Yet Jeremiah remained faithful and hopeful throughout his journey.”

The true leadership stories are incredible:

• Jo Anne Lyons—deep disappointment in her own denomination’s position on social justice, yet she became its leader!

• Farai Mutamiri—a pastor (now bishop) in Zimbabwe (harassed, jailed, and more). When his congregation was removed from their church building, they met outside for five years (as did other churches). “We became so strong. People would come to church with their Bibles and with wet towels, so they were prepared for tear gas.”

• Tita Evertsz—abandoned a life of drugs (living in the U.S.), left her abusive husband, and with three young children returned to Guatemala. God uses her to live and minister in a 60,000-person slum. Disillusioned? Yes—neighboring churches outside the slum rejected new converts. Hope? Read her story.

• Dr. Phil Thuma—gratefully stuck with his calling to do malaria research in Zambia and launched a nonprofit in his basement. He’s featured in the “Discernment” chapter—a prevailing theme across every narrative. (See my review of The Discerning Life and The Discerning Leader Podcast with Steve Macchia and yours truly.) The authors quote Henri Nouwen, “Discernment is a life of listening to a deeper sound and marching to a different beat, a life in which we become ‘all ears.’”

• Camille Melki—founder of Heart for Lebanon, one day realized he was demanding answers from God about his difficulties, but was asking the wrong question. “Most of the time when you ask the why question, God won’t give you an answer. Should you try the how question…you better have a notebook and a pen, because the answer is very, very long.”

Amazingly, in this compact book (but also deep book), you’ll thank God for the other dozen hope-filled leaders from Poland, Philippines, Palestine, Haiti, Oklahoma, India, Detroit (whew—what a story!), and other neighborhoods where leaders are Jesus-in-the-flesh. 

You’ll be convicted also. When Camille Melki was earning his master’s degree in the U.S., he agreed to serve as a youth pastor—but only on one condition. “He made the hiring committee commit to firing him the day he graduated” so he could return to Lebanon where God had called him to minister.

The themes from Jeremiah and real life will touch your soul: False Hope, Faint Hope, Forgotten Hope, Suffering, Surrender, Commitment, Justice, Sacrifice, Forgiveness (powerful!), Discernment, Obedience, Perseverance, and Community.

The writing is superb and a delight—and helps soften the hard themes. A Haitian leader recommends, “If you don’t have patience, don’t go into ministry. Especially in this country, we need barrels of it.”

It’s impossible to read this book without a pen. The quotable quotes from Eugene Peterson, Tim Keller, and others jump off the page, like this one from C.S. Lewis: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Or this from Oswald Chambers at the beginning of the “Discernment” chapter: “The purpose of God is not to answer our prayers, but by our prayers we come to discern the mind of God.”

If it’s been a while since you’ve read a gritty, honest book—read this one. It’s contrarian. “The sun will come out tomorrow”—not always true. And this: “We’ve all heard that ‘failure is never final.’ But for many, it is final.” But—there’s hope! (Read the powerful poke-in-the-ribs questions at the end of every chapter, like this one: “Is your tendency to live inwardly or outwardly? Why?")

Note: Kudos to Greer and Horst who had numerous opportunities to promote their organization, Hope International—but they didn’t. They shared the platform with other heroes. (So well done—and another shout-out for their book, Rooting for Rivals.)

If cynicism and lost hope have you by your ankles—read this book. (There is enduring hope.)

To order from Amazon, click on title for The Gift of Disillusionment: Enduring Hope for Leaders After Idealism Fades, by Peter Greer and Chris Horst, with Brianna Lapp and Jill Heisey. Listen on Libro.fm (6 hours, 7 minutes). And thanks to Bethany House Publishers for sending me a review copy.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Have you moved from being an idealist to a cynic? “Cynicism prompts us to slip back from the dance floor and move to a place of safe distance in the balcony, where we can smugly critique the moves of others. Look at those ridiculous dance moves, we criticize.” Where are you today? Idealist? Cynic? Disillusioned? Hopeful?

2) The authors remind us that we are in a grueling battle. “We don’t wear sandals to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, and we don’t show up to push back darkness without the Light. While there are plenty of surprises in life, we know one thing for sure: This journey will be exceedingly difficult. We all have firsthand experience and the promise of Jesus to confirm it: ‘Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows.’” Are you wearing sandals or combat boots as you battle evil?

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 ASSIGNMENT! Read The Gift of Disillusionment and identify each hero’s social style!

Buckets Countdown:
The People Bucket (#7) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The People Bucket Core Competency: “We celebrate the God-designed uniqueness of our team members, our customers, our donors, and our volunteers. We are diligent about understanding the four social styles—Analyticals, Drivers, Amiables and Expressives—and helping our people find their comfort zones as they grow in their interpersonal versatility skills.”

ASSIGNMENT! Download the chart in the People Bucket, “General Overview of the Four Social Styles,” and then as you read about the heroes in The Gift of Disillusionment—discern each person’s social style: Analytical, Driver, Amiable, or Expressive?
 
And…as you lead and manage your team (or connect with family and friends), discern if you are leveraging your versatility in finding your comfort zone—and also adapting to others’ styles and comfort zones. (Example: I’m a Driver. My wife, Joanne, is an Analytical. Versatility required!) Read Mistake #16 in Mastering Mistake-Making.
 
The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. For more, visit the People Bucket here. 

BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022). And click here to read John's review of Steve's new book, The Discerning Life.

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Well…this is encouraging! Even inspirational! The author of ROAR says that he’s “fond of asking eighty-year olds, What is your favorite future?” He’s on the constant search for role models “who are doing extraordinary things in their seventies and eighties, ignoring self-imposed ageism or the refrain that ‘you are too old to do that!’” Visit John’s PIC blog to read Roar: Into the Second Half of Your Life (Before It's Too Late), by Michael Clinton.

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. We’ve “rebranded" the four social styles into these four descriptors: Info-Sponges, Just-the-Facts, Heartfelts, and Share-Meisters. (Read more.) To communicate effectively to all four social styles, contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.

Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being

Issue No. 514 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a new book (published today) that asks, “PICK ONE: Life-Giving Work or Life-Sucking Work?” And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for my new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of my latest “PICs.”
 
In one organization in Road to Flourishing, “…when compensation became the last remaining complaint and nothing was done about it, it stuck out like a sore thumb.”

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PICK ONE: Life-Giving Work or Life-Sucking Work

Right now. Clear your calendar. (Really!)

Next, order multiple copies of Road to Flourishing and schedule a day—or an offsite retreat—with your team members. If “collaboration is the secret sauce of a high-performing culture” and “eating together is a sacred thing,” as Al Lopus notes, then use this powerful book to assess and enrich your organization’s culture.

Unlike any book you’ve ever read, this practical, practical roadmap oozes with both best practices and worst practices from the trenches—and you can learn from both! 

EXAMPLE #1: “THE LAST 10 PERCENT.” Lopus writes, “One of the best conflict-resolution principles for teams that I’ve heard comes from Rock Point Church in Arizona. They call it ‘the last 10 percent.’ 

“As lead pastor Bill Bush explains, ‘When we’re in a tough meeting, we always ask around the room, ‘Hey, did everyone say the last 10 percent?’ Because I know there are a lot of people who will say 90 percent of what’s bothering them. And the problem is, that last 10 percent is usually the real problem. And so you keep having meetings that sound so good. We high-five each other—‘Hey, we got through. We communicated so clearly. That was great.’ And then everybody walked out of there with the real problem still tucked away.’”

As the CEO and Cofounder of Best Christian Workplaces Institute, Al Lopus has seen it all! (Oh, my!) BCWI launched in 2002 as an employee engagement ministry dedicated to helping Christian leaders and organizations achieve their full potential by creating flourishing staff workplaces. BCWI helps measure and improve the health of organizations through surveys, a unique 360 Leadership Review process, and consulting services. (Visit their website here.)

Road to Flourishing is no pie-in-the-sky, trendy book from academic idealists. On the contrary! Research-based, the book delivers what Lopus and the team at BCWI have learned from “the most widely used Christian-based engagement survey” across the globe. And get this! They have actually inspired more than 1,000 churches, ministries, and Christian-owned businesses to measure the health of their workplace cultures.

Using the helpful “FLOURISH Model,” Road to Flourishing goes deep on “Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being” (the book’s subtitle). So…how would your team members rate these eight factors—and have you ever discerned an objective, quantifiable way to measure overall engagement at your shop?
   • Fantastic Teams
   • Life-Giving Work
   • Outstanding Talent
   • Uplifting Growth
   • Rewarding Compensation
   • Inspirational Leadership
   • Sustainable Strategy
   • Healthy Communication

EXAMPLE #2: COMPENSATION CONUNDRUMS. I don’t need to urge you to read the chapter, “Rewarding Compensation,” because you and your team members will skip to Chapter 6 first (like I did!). Lopus describes two Christian organizations that “committed the same classic error in opposite ways.” 

• Classic Error #1: Sore Thumb! Seven of the eight “FLOURISH” factors improved in one organization—“but when compensation became the last remaining complaint and nothing was done about it, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Despite how far the organization had progressed, poor compensation yanked employee engagement back like a bungee cord around its waist.” (Memorable metaphor!)

• Classic Error #2: Bribed to Cause Mayhem! In another organization, employee pay and benefits did receive high marks—but the staff “gave their employer low marks on most keys to a flourishing culture.” The problem? “…there was a disturbing number of disengaged employees, people who weren’t just unenthusiastic at work but were actively pumping toxicity and dysfunction into the culture.” Lopus notes that “…they were being paid so well that they were sure never to leave on their own. They were being bribed to keep causing mayhem, and they were not about to kill the golden goose.”

EXAMPLE #3: “CULTURE IS A BUCKET OF PURE WATER.” The book shines well-deserved spotlights on healthy organizational cultures, including Joni & Friends, where Doug Mazza, the former president and CEO, used a “bucket” metaphor (nice!): 

“Culture is a bucket of pure water,” says Mazza. “If it’s polluted, dropping in a great strategy is not going to clean it. Great strategies flourish in clean water. Get the culture right, point to it constantly, and new strategies will evolve and are invented in healthy cultures.” Lopus adds, “Put another way, while a sustainable strategy nourishes a flourishing culture, a flourishing culture irrigates a sustainable strategy.”

(Note: Chapter 8, “Sustainable Strategy” mentions why the Joni & Friends team followed Henry Blackaby’s approach in Experiencing God.)
 

BONUS PODCAST!
Click here to listen to Al Lopus interview Doug Mazza on The Flourishing Culture Podcast, “How Flourishing Workplace Culture Fosters a Thriving Mission,” (Season 7, Episode 16).

Lopus doesn’t mince words when writing about the toxic work cultures he’s observed. But Road to Flourishing is also upbeat—you can create “life-giving work” for every team member. You have two options: (1) continue to apply inappropriate Band-Aids to your sick workplace, or (2) go deeper and discover how your organization’s culture will flourish with God-honoring and intentional best practices. Reading this book with your team members is a no-brainer. 

PICK ONE: 
[  ] Life-giving work.
[  ] Life-sucking work.

To order from Amazon, click on title for Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being, by Al Lopus with Cory Hartman. Listen on Libro.fm (6 hours, 52 minutes). BULK PRICING: Use the discount code BCWI at ivpress.com to receive 40% off 10+ books or 50% off 25+ books.



YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) In the foreword to Road to Flourishing, Peter Greer, president and CEO of Hope International, urges organizations to invite BCWI to assess and measure their organizational cultures. “You can’t fix what you don’t know is broken…” writes Greer. How are we measuring employee engagement and well-being? (Note: Watch for my next eNews with my review of The Gift of Disillusionment, by Peter Greer and Chris Horst.)

2) Of the eight factors in a flourishing culture, Al Lopus notes that “The strongest overall influence on workplace culture is inspirational leadership, closely followed by life-giving work.” List the eight factors (see above) in F.L.O.U.R.I.S.H. and discuss: What do we do well? What needs dramatic improvement? And…what’s our plan? 

 

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The Culture Bucket Core Competency includes this zinger: “We invite those who won’t live out our values to exit.”

Buckets Countdown:
The Culture Bucket (#8) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.

The Culture Bucket Core Competency: “We strive to create a corporate culture with core values that are crystal clear. We yearn for a God-honoring workplace where grace and trust are alive and well. Because we are human we will always have relational conflicts, so we are zealots about resolving conflict early. We invite those who won’t live out our values to exit. We experience true joy at work.”

QUESTION: Why do you think that more than 1,000 churches, ministries, and Christian-owned businesses invested time in measuring the health of their workplace cultures? What would be the upside of achieving recognition as a Certified Best Christian Workplace? Check it out here!

The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here. For more, visit the Culture Bucket here.

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10 BIGGEST TAX AND FINANCIAL MISTAKES! Do you know the “10 Biggest Tax and Financial Mistakes Made by Churches and Nonprofits?” Read the short reviews of the 2022 tax and financial guides from ECFA in John’s new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC).

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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. “Outstanding Talent” is one of the eight factors on the “Road to Flourishing.” We can help you identify, recruit, train, and inspire the right people for the right spots on your communication and marketing teams. Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).

Your Weekly Staff Meeting is emailed free one to three times a month to subscribers. We do not accept any form of compensation from authors or publishers for book reviews. As an Amazon Associate, we earn Amazon gift cards from qualifying purchases. As a Libro.fm Affiliate, we earn credits. 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.